LIBRARV OF CONGRESS, 



.shelf_ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



I^- 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 



f 



The Old Forts Taken 



ON 

ENDLESS PUNISHMENT AND 
FUTURE LIFE 




BY 

REV. A^ Af'MINER, D.D. 




BOSTON 
UNIYERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1878 






Copyrir^ht, 
By Uxitersalist Publishing House. 

1878. 



The Library 
OF Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Cambridge : 
Press of John Wilson ^ Son, 



p 

(/- PREFACE. 



So extraordinary has been the mterest excited 
of late in the discussion of the doctrine of End- 
less Punishment, that, notwithstanding the 
numerous contributions thereto from all quar- 
ters, both at home and abroad, it has been 
thought that these Lectures might reach some 
minds to which more elaborate works would 
not gain access. Thej^ were delivered ex- 
temporaneously during tlie past season in the 
Columbus Avenue Universalist Church. The 
first four were phonographically reported, and 
revised by the author ; while the fifth was 
written some months after its delivery. 

The Author. 

Boston, May 13, 1878. 



CONTENTS. 



-♦- 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

The Old Forts Taken 1 

LECTURE IL 
The New Forts Indefensible 24 

LECTURE III. 
Is THAT A Christian Temper which eagerly 

SEEKS FOR NEW DEFENCES, WHEN THE OLD 
HAVE BEEN SWEPT AWAY ? 49 

LECTURE TV. 

If Moral in its Influence, why was it Re- 
jected OF God, as a Motive to Obedience, 

FOR AT LEAST FoUR THOUSAND YeARS . . 70 

LECTURE Y. 

What Universalism has to say of the Future 
Life 97 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 

"And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls 

SHALL he bring DOWN, LAY LOW, AND BRING TO THE 
GROUND, EVEN TO THE DUST." — Isttiah XXV. 12. 

T NEED not remark the importance of walls and 
-^ forts in the defence of ancient cities against the 
incursions of enemies. With means of warfare far 
less effective than those which prevail in modern 
times, a good wall about a city was a successful 
defence against every thing but the battering-ram ; 
and, if strong enough, good even against that. 

But it was the purpose of the fortresses, lifted far 
above the wall, so to command the view on all sides, 
as that, by the usual weapons of defence, the be- 
siegers might be kept at bay. Generally, the holders 
of the forts were quite secure. But when these for- 
tresses were levelled to the dust, the city was already 
taken. 

So it is in the field of controversy. When doc- 
trines long prevailing, and the propositions by which 



"I ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

thej^ have been defended, have been successfully as- 
sailed ; when close scrutiny and careful analj^sis have 
exposed their weakness, and candid minds have sur- 
rendered, — discomfiture already perches upon their 
banners, and the revolution is half effected. The 
arm}" may not be entirel}^ broken up ; it may with- 
draw with some show of order, and throw up new 
intrenchments, which themselves must be subse- 
quently carried ; but victory is at length assured. 

This is substantiall}' the condition to-day of the co- 
horts of the doctrine of Endless Punishment. The 
varied defences of the doctrine which have been 
made prominent, and have been generally relied 
upon, have been cast down. One fortress after 
another upon the high towers has been laid low, 
even in the dust. I do not say that there is not 
man}' a sick and wounded soldier lingering still 
among the ruins ; but I do say that a large part 
of the effective arm}' has been taken captive, and 
is henceforth bound to service in the cause of 
truth. 

Long ago was it conceded, notwithstanding the 
current quotations therefrom to the contrary, that 
the Old Testament does not teach the doctrine of 
endless, not even future, punishment. The declara- 
tion of Dr. George Campbell, a Scotch Presbyterian 
divine, made many years ago, that "it is plain that 
in the Old Testament the most profound silence 
is observed in regard to the state of the deceased, 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 3 

their jo3^s or sorrows, happiness or miser}^/' ^ is now 
accepted b}' scholars on all hands. It would be 
difficult to find a respectable Biblical critic who 
would now hazard his reputation by denying this 
proposition. 

Yet among the Jews, before and in Christ's time, 
it is probable that the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment prevailed more or less extensively, — how ex- 
tensively it is impossible to say. It does not appear 
that all the sects held it. The Sadducees, surely, 
did not. The pertinent query arises, — Whence came 
it? Did it grow up among them, as one or another 
error has grown up among every living nation on 
the face of the earth ? Or was it imported into their 
midst from the pagan nations about them ? The lat- 
ter has been the prevalent view, and has in its favor 
the natural adaptation of so barbarous a doctrine (if 
it could ever be fitting) to the general thought and 
home-life of the pagan world. However that may 
be, the first that we know of the doctrine among 
the Jews is commonly, but perhaps erroneously, sup- 
posed to be taught us in the book of Enoch. The 
authorship of this book is quite uncertain. That it 
is apocryphal — utterly so — is the universal opinion. 
It has been attributed, on the one hand, to the old 
patriarch of that name ; on the other, to some Jews 
of a later period, even as late as the time of the 
Maccabees. Still others suppose it to have origi- 

1 Dissertation VI., part ii. sect. 19. 



4 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

nated among the Jews in Babylon or in Eg^^pt. 
Come whence it ma}', and whensoever it ma}' have 
arisen, it is supposed to have been quoted b}^ the 
apostle Jude by name, and is quoted by several of 
the early Christian fathers. It was lost soon after 
the first Christian centuries, and was not recovered 
till about one hundred years ago, when the celebrated 
traveller, Bruce, met with copies of it in Abyssinia, 
in the Ethiopic language, into which it had been 
translated from the original Hebrew, through the 
Greek. In 1821,^ it was re-translated into English 
by a professor of Oxford College, England. 

This book bases the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment, not upon the fall of Adam, nor upon the ori- 
ginal corruption of man, — of which it makes no 
mention whatever, — but upon the fall of angels, two 
hundred in number, definiteh' specified, who, seduced 
by the beautiful daughters of men, begat an unhol}' 
race of giants four hundred and fifty feet high ; and 
these, b}' the power of magic, corrupted the whole 
human race. The book goes on to saj^, as we are 
told b}' the learned, that, in consequence of this fall, 
the angels were bound in everlasting chains against 
the judgment of the great day. It further informs 
us that, at the final judgment, wicked men also are 
to be consigned to a gaping hell, in the midst of 
flames of fire blazing brighth', with glittering moun- 
tains, as it were, whirled around and agitated from 

1 Some say, 1838. 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN, 5 

side to side.^ Apocrj^hal as it is, the book, of 
course, is of no account whatever, except as giving 
the earliest indication of a prevalence among the 
Jews, so far as we know, of the doctrine of end- 
less punishment. Even the portions of this col- 
lection which most favor that doctrine may be 
Christian forgeries of a later date than the original 
work.^ 

The next mention, it is believed, of this doctrine 
among the Jews is in another apocryphal book, cur- 
rentty known as the second book of Esdras, or Ezra, 
inserted, with other apocryphal writings, between the 
Old and New Testaments, in many of our Bibles. 
We must not identify this work with the canonical 
book of Ezra that precedes that of Nehemiah ; nor 
does the portion of the book contained in our Bibles 
teach the doctrine in question. It is alleged by the 
learned that, at verse 35 of chapter vii., there was 
formerly another chapter, in which the doctrine was 
distinctly laid down ; which chapter, although it 
dropped out for a time, has of late j^ears been re- 
covered.^ 

This book bases the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment upon Adam's transgression, — not according to 

1 See " Universalist Expositor," vol. iv. art. 28; also, Beecher's 
"Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution," chap. x. 

2 See "Universalist Quarterh^," 1878. art. 11. This able writer 
questions, and apparently with good reason, the consistency of the 
book on this subject, if not its teaching such a doctrine altogether. 

3 Beecher's "Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution," chap. xi. 



6 E. YD LESS PCXISHMEyr. 

the philosophy that has prevailed in later times, but 
by the operation of a subtle law of evil, through 
which Adam has been made to corrupt all mankind. 
The study of the book, as we have it in oui' apocr}'- 
phal collections, will show that a long controversy, 
on the merits of the doctrine of this subtle law and 
its consequences, whatever they may be, is carried 
on between the writer, Ezra, or whomsoever he may 
have been, on the one hand, and God and his angel, 
Uriel, on the other. Ezra is continually attacking, 
in the utmost wonder, the righteousness of the scheme 
by which such vast ruin is wi'ought ; and the angel, 
speaking for God, is made to reply that it is impos- 
sible for men to understand it : nevertheless that it 
is a fact : and there it is made to rest. Dr. Edward 
Beecher says that Ezra's criticisms are by no means 
successfully answered ; and throughout the protracted 
controversy he undoubtedly has the best of the 
argimient. 

In these two books are contained all the wiitings 
— scholars themselves being judges — known to have 
been extant among the Jews, down to Christ's time. 
in which the doctrine of endless punishment is even 
alleged to be taught ; and of the ti'uth of these inter- 
pretations there may be room for gi'ave doubt. But 
let us remember that not one of the canonical books 
contains any allusion to the future ''joys or soitows, 
happiness or misery of the departed." These two 
apocr^-^Dhal, uTesponsible, and unauthentic works 



1 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 7 

alone affirm that doctrine, even if they affirm it, down 
to the time of Christ. 

Among the Christians there sprang up, at length, 
the doctrine of endless punishment : not, however, 
until the opposite doctrine of Universalism had pre- 
vailed for several generations, and had been advo- 
cated by the first scholars of those times, — among 
whom was Origen of Alexandria, the head of the 
great Catechetical School, the founder of scientific 
theology, and confessedly the first scholar of the early 
centuries ; nor, until after three of the five other 
great schools had been led by men who did not 
believe in the doctrine of endless punishment, did 
it come to hold a somewhat conspicuous place. 

It has been variousl}' based in Christian times — 
though by a diff*erent philosophy from that of the 
book of Ezra — upon the fall of Adam ; of which 
views the two principal are : first, that the whole 
race was so identified with Adam that his sin became 
their guilt ; and, second, that Adam was so the rep- 
resentative head of the race — like the man we send 
to the General Court as our representative to make 
the laws by which we are all bound — that as he 
sinned, all men sinned in him, and thus became 
amenable with him to all the punishment he deserved. 
The former of these views was the Augustinian, and 
prevailed more or less widely during and subsequent 
to the Augustinian age. The latter is that of the 
Calvinists in general, and has been the view of recent 
centuries. 



8 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

I do not hesitate to say, friends, that no man, whose 
reason and judgment are not broken down by the 
weight of authority or force of education, can look 
either of those views in the face and sa}^ it is wise, 
or just, or good. Nay, I would undertake to saj" 
that without great and irrational flexibilit}^ of judg- 
ment no man can believe either of them. That God 
should have established hereditary and social rela- 
tions among men, from which should flow more or 
less of evil, moral and ph^^sical, but which, in their 
final and broader operations, shall secure immensely 
greater good to ever}' individual of the race, I can 
easily understand ; and though the}^ may cause pain 
and grief to the sensitive heart for the time being, 
a comprehensive philosoph}' may accept them and 
still believe that God is infinitel}' good. But that 
God, infinitely wise, powerful, and good, has so 
identified all souls with one individual as that his 
sin, without the consent of either party in interest, 
should have fatally and eternallj' corrupted and 
ruined the entire race, is simply past all human be- 
lief. I saj', all human belief ! I do not forget what 
barbarous ages have believed. I do not forget that 
we have such facts in histor}^ as human beings de- 
vouring each other ; as wives, from a sense of relig- 
ious duty, sacrificing themselves on the funeral p^TC 
of their husbands ; as children leaving their aged 
and infirm parents in the wilderness to perish, and 
parents destroying their helpless infants, — all of 



% 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 9 

which examples, and the like of them, are infinitely 
weak in comparison with the enormity under consid- 
eration. I affirm nothing, however, of ignorant and 
superstitious ages. But to an enlightened age, with 
but a meagrely Christianized conscience, doctrines 
like these of which I am speaking are impossible 
T do not forget that Scripture is quoted in defence of 
them. I do not forget that the Scriptures, by a bold 
figure, speak of our dying in Adam ; since, inheriting 
the same physical nature and tendencies as he, we 
copy his example and share his fate. But if an at- 
tempt be made to silence reason b}^ Scripture, then 
must Scripture be held to a fair exposition. " As in 
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive." If w^e will have it that men die in Adam 
without their personal agenc}', then as a matter of 
fair treatment of Scripture, honorable dealing with 
men, and defence of divine goodness, let us admit 
that they are made alive in Christ without their per- 
sonal agency. I do not, of course, suggest that we 
do die in Adam without our personal agency ; nor 
that we are made alive in Christ without our personal 
agency. The propositions, however, must stand or 
fall together. But we need not dwell here. These de- 
fences of the doctrine of endless punishment have been 
practically abandoned. These walls have been bat- 
tered down, and their fortresses levelled in the dust. 
You will observe that the doctrine of the ruin of 
the race through the fall of Adam involves in itself 



10 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

the whole question of original sin and entire native 
depravit}", which some professedl}' scientific teachers 
of theologj' about us are unconsciously refuting, by 
affirming, and continually re-affirming, that the law 
of evil tends to permanence of evil character ; as 
though character born of original sin and total de- 
pravity were not sufficiently grounded in evil, and 
possessed of sufficiently vicious momentum, to hold 
its way without extraneous aid, but needed strength- 
ening from the start. 

We come now to another defence long felt to be a 
strong fortress of the doctrine, although almost never 
urged at present ; namel}', the assumption that " sin 
is infinite." True, it is committed b}^ poor, finite, 
ignorant, and often unconscious (or but half con- 
scious) man ; committed in heat, under all the 
temptations and trials of Nature and of social life ; 
committed oftentimes thoughtlessly : nevertheless, 
since it is a transgression of the law of the infinite 
God, it takes on the proportions and magnitude of 
the authority against w^hich it is perpetrated. We 
hear ver}^ little of this to-day ; though half a century 
ago all the pulpits of the land were ablaze with the 
imputation of infinite sin, and the necessity, there- 
fore, of infinite punishment. But the irresistible as- 
saults which have been made upon it have well-nigh 
driven it from the light of day. 

In the first place, if an act of man transgressing 
a law of God is an infinite act, an act of the same 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN, 11 

man obejdng the law would also be infinite ; and thus 
we have not infinite sin alone, but infinite virtue as 
well. And if both merit and demerit infinitely 
abound, the prospect of a heaven of infinite blessed- 
ness will be quite as assured as the danger of a hell 
of infinite woe ; for where is the soul that has never 
even once obe3^ed? 

Again, all degrees of sin are necessarily swept 
away by this assumption ; so that the New Testa- 
ment doctrine of rewarding men according to their 
deeds becomes a fiction ; beating some with few 
stripes and some with many, according to their de- 
grees of demerit, is a fiction ; and human distinctions 
in the administration of criminal law, by which one 
man is fined, another imprisoned, and another exe- 
cuted upon the scaflTold, rest upon grounds that are 
entirely fictitious. 

Yet again : if every sin is infinite, and deserves 
infinite punishment, then it deserves not simply pun- 
ishment that is infinite in duration, but also infinite 
in degree. The necessary result of such reasoning 
is that every single sin deserves the greatest and 
longest-continued punishment that infinite power can 
inflict. Such a result, properly presented, ought to 
satisfy the most insatiable appetite for agony, and 
awaken fresh and transcendent applause in Tremont 
Temple in the noon-tide blaze of every returning 
Monday. 

But we have not yet touched bottom. All this is 



12 ENDLESS PUXISHMENT, 

for one sin ; and the siuuer goes on, during a life of 
eight}' 3'ears, adding sin to sin, mountain high ; jus- 
tice, meanwhile, exhausting the divine wrath in the 
futile attempt to render adequate punishment for even 
one of them ; while all the rest are crying to heaven 
in vain for vengeance. Thus is the goodness of God 
obscured, and the garments of our Lord, whose grace 
abounds far more widely than sin, trailed in the dust. 
Such is the sad extreme to which a remorseless phi- 
losophy concerning the divine judgments logically re- 
duces us. 

Before the growing light of the ages, this doctrine 
of infinite sin has shrunk away and withdrawn from 
the public gaze, ^^hether it is still written in the 
creeds matters little ; for much is written there that 
the men of to-day totally disregard. This fortress, 
I make no hesitation in saying, has been levelled in 
the dust. There probably is not a clergyman in Bos- 
ton who will stand in his place and re-aftirm it. 

Nor do we find the doctrine rested as formerly on 
the naked presentation of law and penalty. It was 
formerly claimed, as though it involved the entire 
agency of God in regard to human destiny, that 
God, having made man a moral being, has placed 
before him Hfe and good, death and evil ; given him 
law, to which is attached the penalty of everlasting 
woe ; informed him that this is his hfe of trial or 
probation, and eternity the world of retribution ; and 
as his life shall be found to have been at the great 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 13 

day, so eternity will be decreed. The Calvinistic de- 
cree of masses of men, before birth, to eternal perdi- 
tion unbearably shocked Arminianism ; but it was 
not at all shocked by the same decree pronounced at 
the moment of death. The practical difference in the 
two was in their dates, — on an average, about thirty- 
three and a third years apart. 

The goodness of God is assumed to be vindicated 
on the ground that he has put the question fairly be- 
fore men ; and, if the}^ do not choose life and good, 
it is simply their own fault. My friends, lift the veil 
a moment, and look back over the pages of history-. 
Has that issue been placed before all men? Have 
infants, idiots, pagans, all nations, been brought into 
the light of Christianity ? Has it been placed before 
every person even in Christian lands ? Has it been 
presented in all its length and breadth before even 
a single soul? The query carries with it its own 
answer. 

But it is said that the case is not quite so dark as 
the critics describe it. It is probable that all infants 
dying in infancy will be saved. This secures the 
destiny of half the race. True ; but on what ground 
can this assumption rest? It ignores the doctrine of 
original sin, and bears half mankind in total corrup- 
tion to heaven, without even an opportunity or the 
capacity for choosing, — without the lapse of the 
briefest period in which they might choose. Accord- 
ing to all the logic of the case these, with the heathen 



14 EXDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

world in its utter cleprayitY, must of necessity be 
consigned to everlasting woe. There are also mil- 
lions of Christians who, on Orthodox grounds, have 
no more hope of salvation than pagans themselves. 
Yet we have the confession that a majority' of man- 
kind will 13 e saved. 

How is this made to appear? Xot, surely, by a 
study of the past. Singularly, just here, Orthodoxy 
turns upon its heel, and assumes that in the future 
the number of the faithful will be relativeh' much 
increased ; that divine light will so shed its effulgence 
upon the world that the millions will believe, and the 
few only remain unbelieving. This is a gracious 
conception, and one would hope the prophecy true. 
But upon what does it stand ? Upon the generous 
sentiments of the human heart, which cry out against 
the abominations of Orthodoxy, and which we are 
cautioned not to trust. If they may be trusted to 
this extent, why not in their suggestions for the few 
remaining ? 

A still more important position claims our atten- 
tion. The modern defenders of the doctrine assume 
that it is not for the sins of this life that men will be 
eternally punished ; that walking In the pathwaj's of 
transgression strengthens the tendencies to sin, and 
permanent sinful character is the consequence ; and 
because men will sin for ever they will be punished 
for ever. This, it will be observed, is new ground. 
It is no longer endless punishment for the sins of 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 15 

this life. It is practically yielding the doctrine that 
this life is one of probation and the next one of retri- 
bution, because it is in irreconcilable conflict with it. 
In this surrender must be embraced the entire cata- 
logue of doctrines and Scripture expositions there- 
with logical!}^ connected. Thus do the still steadfast 
friends of the doctrine of endless punishment, not 
the thousands who have repudiated it alone, abandon 
its old defences. 

This brings me to the Scriptural fortresses of the 
doctrine. In the first place, there arises to our 
thought here the entire roll of fire penalties, — the 
unquenchable fire ; the furnace of fire ; the lake of 
fire burning with brimstone ; everlasting fire prepared 
for the devil and his angels ; suffering the vengeance 
of eternal fire. These and like phrases have been 
adduced, from time immemorial, in defence of the 
doctrine of endless punishment ; and with reasonings, 
expressed or implied, much* after this fashion : " We 
see nothing in this world that corresponds to these 
representations. Surely, the}^ cannot mean the 
gnawings of a guilty conscience ; they cannot signify 
the remorse which preys upon the guilty soul. The 
stjie is too flaming, too lofty, too burning, too awful ! " 
When Universalists, half a century ago, alleged that 
these passages of Scripture must be understood meta- 
phorically, as expressive of the present invisible woes 
of the sinful soul, they were accused of "prophesy- 
ing smooth things," of "daubing with untempered 



■ 



16 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

mortar," of "taking away from the word of God." 
Now, I summon 3'ou to observe, there is not an in- 
telKgent Protestant pulpit in the land but admits 
that the}^ are not to be literall}^ understood. The 
position that the phrase " everlasting fire," and other 
kindred phrases, apply literally to the next world, 
has been entirely surrendered. And, therefore, if 
these do mean, as is now conceded on all hands, the 
remorse of a guilty soul, the pangs of a moral sense, 
the domination of a guilty conscience, — since these 
are experienced here, there remains no implication 
that they must apply, even metaphorically, to another 
world. This fortress, therefore, is carried. 

Xor is the conclusion in any wise modified by the 
designation of the fire as everlasting. The Greek 
word so translated is conceded by scholars, on all 
hands, to mean what our own Church has for a cen- 
tury maintained. It primarily implies quality rather 
than time ; and, when referring to time, it is alto- 
gether indefinite, depending for its force upon the 
subject to which it is appHed. There is much virtual 
reasoning in a circle here : punishment is endless 
because called everlasting ; and everlasting means 
endless because applied to punishment. In the most 
valuable work on this subject yet written,^ and in the 
testimony of leading exegetes on both sides of the 
Atlantic, the truth is made quite clearly to appear. 
In the earliest classical use of the noun from which 

1 Eev. Dr. Hanson's, of Chicago. 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN. 17 

the words "everlasting'' and "eternal" are derived, it 
does not mean duration at all, but simply life. Of this 
there are many examples. Homer says: " For life 
(aion) has been destro3^ed." Again: "Too early 
hast thou perished from life " (aion) . The god Mer- 
cury is described as destroying the life (aion) of a 
mountain tortoise.^ From being applied to life itself, 
it comes at length to be applied to the duration or 
term of life ; and so we have the meaning " age ; " 
and, b}^ a still further remove, any specific age, or dis- 
pensation, — as the Jewish age, or the Mosaic dispen- 
sation. Another step in modification of its meaning 
gives to it the sense of the word " world," as applied 
to any general state of things ; as when we say, " The 
world is upside down," — not meaning the world 
physically, but the general state of affairs. When 
the Scriptures speak of an age-long punishment, — 
the age-long dispensation of Aaron, — they speak 
indefinitely^ To assume that when the term is ap- 
plied to punishment it means endless, is to deny that 
punishment is in its nature corrective, and to assume 
that it is necessaril}^ unceasing. It is bad reasoning 
to say that these words apply equally to the life of 
the righteous and the punishment of the wicked, 
and that they must, therefore, mean just as much in 
the one case as in the other. In the very examples 
of Scripture, we are compelled to yield such an in- 

1 Beecher's "Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution," chap, xv., from 
which these examples are quoted. 

2 



18 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

terpretation. The mountains are not as enduring as 
God ; the priesthood of Aaron long ago came to an 
end. In man}' ways it appears that these words are 
used in regard to various things in a ver}^ indefinite 
sense. 

Now if we assume that punishment is necessarily 
endless, we have assumed our argument, independent 
of the word ' ' everlasting ;" but if we assume it to 
be in harmony with other exhibitions of di\dne good- 
ness ; to be an instrumentality subordinate to good- 
ness ; a means of correction and chastisement, — we 
have something in the nature and intent of punish- 
ment that limits its continuance. Then the word 
rendered " everlasting," having, in its New Testament 
signification, both something of quality and some- 
thing of time indefinite, most happil}' presents it in 
its divinest light. Substantially to this result the 
scholarship of the ages has at length come ; and the 
fortress built of the words rendered ' ' everlasting " 
and ' ' eternal " is practically overthrown. 

Professor Tyler defends the usual limitarian view 
in this contr overs}', without, however, deming the 
wide signification and various modifications in the 
meanino; of the terms rendered ' ' everlastins; " and 
''eternal." In the course of his discussion, he 
makes this significant remark: "The words 'hell' 
and ' damnation ' may well be changed in our ver- 
sion, because the latter is not used now in the sense 
in which it was used in the time of our translators ; 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN, 19 

and the former is used to render ' sheol ' in the Old 
Testament, and both ' hades ' and ' gehenna ' in the 
New, to neither of which is it exactly equivalent, 
still less to all." ^ Canon Farrar expurgates from a 
proper translation of the New Testament, not only 
the words "hell" and ''damnation," but also the 
word " everlasting ; " without which three words, he 
intimates, the popular doctrine of hell would have no 
foundation.^ 

In this connection. Matt. xxv. 31-46 merits 
consideration. If assumed to be a description of 
a general and final judgment, with the penalty 
of endless punishment appended as the portion of 
those on the left hand, we encounter certain other 
difficulties which must not be overlooked : first, it is 
so closely identified, by the connectives with which 
the several paragraphs open, with the preceding parts 
of the discourse, running through Matt, xxiii. and 
xxiv. , that the whole is seen to present the succes- 
sive stages of one great event or series of events, 
restricted, in Matt. xxiv. 84, to the lifetime of the 
generation then on the earth ; secondly, Matt. xxv. 
31-46 is clearly parallel to Matt. xvi. 27, 28, where 
the events are limited, though in dififerent terms, 
within the same compass ; and thirdly, the judgment, 
whensoever it was to transpire, was based, not on 
perpetual sinning, but on sins already committed ; 

1 The New Englander, March, 1878, p. 232. 

2 Eternal Hope, sermon iii. 



20 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

"I was an hungered, and j^e gave me no meat; 
I was thirst}^, and 3^e gave me no drink ; I was 
a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and 
ye clotlied me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye 
visited me not." It is thus placed out of har- 
mon}^ with the prominent modern defence of the 
doctrine of eternal perdition, — namely, perpetual 
sinning. 

Another surrender, quite important in this con- 
nection, is the construction put upon the Saviour's 
language when asked (Luke xiii. 23), "Are there 
few that be saved ? " He said : ' ' Enter in at the 
straight gate ; for wide is the gate, and broad is the 
way, that leadeth to destruction, and man}' there be 
which go in thereat ; because straight is the gate, 
and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and 
few there be that find it." If this language applies 
to the final condition of mankind, as commonly sup- 
posed, it is conclusive of the proposition that the 
mass of mankind will be lost, and a select few onty 
saved. The doctrine, then, that the great mass will 
be saved, and that the number lost, as compared 
with the number saved, will be no more than the 
number in our penitentiaries compared with the 
whole population, compels a new application of 
the Saviour's language, and a new interpretation 
of its import. In like manner, the doctrine of the 
literal wrath of God, literal banishment from His 
presence, and literal separation of one class of per- 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN, 21 

sons from another even in the judgment which the}^ 
still teach, is no longer affirmed by the more schol- 
arly defenders of endless punishment. 

Almost numberless are the converts among lead- 
ing men, in pulpit and press, to a defence, in one 
form or another, of the great hopes of the gospel. 
Dr. Parker, of Hartford, looks upon the doctrine of 
the endless punishment of the mass of men, who have 
never heard of Christ or have never accepted him, 
as "intolerable and outrageous!" "Rather than 
preach such a doctrine," says he, " I would be for 
ever dumb." ^ Dr. Arthur Crosby, Presbyterian, of 
New York, said, " He could not conceive of eternal 
punishment except on the basis of eternal sinning." 
Rev. Nathan Hubbell, Methodist, "could not believe 
it at all." 2 Dr. Wheedon, of the " Methodist Quar- 
terly," said, years ago, that there is a class of lov- 
ing, pure-hearted Christians, " in other respects. 
Orthodox, to whom such a retribution is utterly 
unthinkable." ^ 

Prof. Diman, of Brown Universit}^, said in King's 
Chapel, Boston : "I affirm that there is no warrant 
whatever for erecting the bald, literal dogma of 
everlasting punishment into an article of the Chris- 
tian faith." "Not a few clergymen of the Church 



1 Quoted from " Universalist Quarterly ;" April, 1878, p. 230. 

2 Quoted by the same from the "New York Herald." 

8 Universalist Quarterly, for April, 1878, where many other testi- 
monies may be found. 



-:i E.VBLESS PCXISHMEyr. 

of England." says the •• Guaivlian." a journal of that 
church, '• are maintaining that the doctrine of the 
endlessness of moral evil and of the pain it involves 
is nowhere taught in the Xew Testament." The 
•• Xew York Herald" says: "It is very evident 
that Universahsm is spreading itself very slowly but 
very surely among all denominations." Presbyteri- 
ans. Congregationalists. Methodists. Episcopalians. 
Quakers, and Jewish Rabbis. — all enter into the 
discussion, and the darker doetiines of the Church 
are widely repudiated. The secular press and the 
weightier magazines and quarterlies bear prominent 
parts in the •• Great Controversy : " and. in general. 
either place the old doctrine on the new gi'ouud of 
endless sinning, or repudiate it altogether. Both are 
substantial sun-enderings of the •' Old Forts." 

When the southern army was overthrown by the 
noi-thern. they were not all taken captive. There 
are many wounded in this battle who must have time 
to recover before they will have strength for confes- 
sion. There are some misguided souls to whom the 
light has not come, and who must be gi*anted a mer- 
ciful parole. But the old fortresses have been car- 
ried : and we hope to satisfy you. in the next lectm*e. 
that the •• Xew Forts " are equally indefensible. 

Meantime, let us recall one or two truths about 
which there is no controversy. " The soul that sin- 
neth. it shall die ; " but no long time elapses, nor 
does anv sn'eat crulf intervene between that death 



THE OLD FORTS TAKEN, 23 

and the sinning soul. Contrariwise, as Prof. Dim an 
says, " Death flows out of sin," — a doctrine that is 
coming to be widely accepted. Transgression is the 
very seed of woe. Punishment is born of sin ; and, 
so far as it is moral, or pertains to conscience, it 
cannot, strictly speaking, survive its parent. If 
men sin in eternit}', that will doubtless be the best 
place to deal with them for it. But the pretence 
that men who sin on earth must of necessity wait 
their punishment in eternit}^ has no Biblical founda- 
tion on which to rest. Contrariwise, " he that sow- 
eth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; 
but he that sow^eth to the spirit shall of the spirit 
reap life everlasting" (Gal. vi. 8). ''The wicked 
are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest ; whose 
waters cast up mire and dirt" (Isa. Ivii. 20). "The 
righteous shall be recompensed in the earth ; much 
more the wicked and the sinner" (Prov. xi. 31) . On 
the other hand, "Great peace have the}^ that love 
thy law, and nothing shall oflend them" (Ps. cxix. 
165). 

Scriptures like these ought to satisfy us in respect 
to the way of life and peace ; and the soul, accus- 
tomed to walk in the pathways of obedience, will 
never \^earningly turn aside to the pathway of sin 
for jo}' and satisfaction. 



24 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



II. 

THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 

** The king's heart is in the hand of the lord, as 

THE rivers of WATER : HE TURNETH IT WHITHERSO- 
EVER HE WILL." — Proverbs xxi. 1. 

nnO-XIGHT I ask your meditation upon "The 
-*- New Forts Erected for the Defence of the 
Doctrine of Endless Punishment." 

In the preceding lecture we have endeavored to 
show 3'ou that the former prominent grounds of de- 
fence and justification of the doctrine of ceaseless 
punishment in the world to come, have been sub- 
stantiall}' abandoned. Ver}^ many leading minds, 
outside the denomination known as Universalist, 
at home and abroad, have avowed their surrender 
of the doctrine, and in general have accepted and 
echoed the ver}' reasons w^hich have prevailed among 
us for a century. While mau}^ leaders have thus 
abandoned the ~ Old Forts, seeing them crumbling 
about their heads, millions of the laity — a mul- 
titude that no man can number — have found happy 
deliverance from such terrible prison-houses, and 
from the severest and most oppressive intellectual 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 25 

and moral burden ever laid upon the souls of men. 
There remain, however, believers of the doctrine, 
who are presenting chiefly new grounds of defence. 
These grounds are stated in various forms, but 
may be summed up in the three following propo- 
sitions : — 

First, sin is self-perpetuating, and will, therefore, 
continue for ever. There is a law of human nature 
by which bad character tends to permanence, and 
therefore to everlasting transgression ; and as pun- 
ishment is alwa^^s involved in sin, since sin w^ill 
continue for ever, punishment also will of necessity 
continue for ever. 

Secondly, the goodness of God, so often adduced 
in refutation of the doctrine of endless sin and suffer- 
ing, is inconclusive to such an end, for the reason 
that we have sin and suffering here ; and 3^et, con- 
fessedty, on all hands, God is now good. And 
since God is as incapable of a little wrong as of a 
gi'eat one, and since a little sin is of the same 
nature as much, and temporal sinning of the same 
nature as eternal sinning, — if a good being can 
permit limited sinning, the same goodness can permit 
eternal sinning. 

Thirdly, however we may feel in doubt about the 
significance or conclusiveness of special passages of 
Scripture as bearing on the doctrine of endless pun- 
ishment, there can be no doubt, it is alleged, that 
the trend of Scripture, the ground-swell of the 



26 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

pages of inspiration, is to the doctrine of eternal 
woe. 

We might amplify these in varied forms of state- 
ment, but they would come substantially to the 
positions before us. 

In the first place, I call your attention to the fact 
that the first proposition is out of harmony with, and 
in contravention of, all the old grounds of defence. 
Consider : The doctrine we now have before us is 
that sin is self-perpetuating ; that character tends to 
permanence in evil, not less than good, and therefore 
to everlasting sinning ; and that, as punishment 
always follows sin, everlasting punishment is the 
natural and necessar}" result. The doctrine of ever- 
lasting punishment is thus made consequent upon 
everlasting sinning. The old doctrine was that of 
probation, — that we are placed on trial here, and if 
we live in and leave this world sinful, we shall be 
sentenced to perpetual woe for that sinfulness. The 
conflict between these two propositions is obvious. 

It must be remembered, too, that the entire theory 
inculcated for the centuries gone by is, that eternal 
punishment in the next world is in retribution for the 
sins of this world ; that sin is infinite ; and because 
it is infinite, — or for whatever reason you please, 
— merits endless punishment ; and that it is spe- 
cifically for the sins of this life that we are to be 
punished in the life to come. But, according to the 
modified theory, man Tvill be punished in the life to 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 21 

come only for his sins committed in the life to come, 
and only because punishment alwa^^s treads on the 
heels of transgression. 

Again, this defence of endless punishment modi- 
fies the usual application of Matthew xxv. 31-46, 
and cannot be reconciled with that application. If 
a general and final judgment be supposed to be 
involved in that passage, it undeniably rests on 
past acts. "I was an hungered, and ye gave me 
no meat ; I was athirst, and 3^e gave me no drink ; 
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, 
and ye clothed me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye 
visited me not." The modified doctrine does not 
rest endless punishment on past sins, but on con- 
tinued sinning ; and therefore nullifies the usual 
application of that passage, making some other 
explanation necessary. To be sure, it was alwaj^s 
a manifestly mistaken application ; but the modified 
doctrine is a logical confession of the mistake, 
which I beg 3'ou to observe. 

Still further, if, as this doctrine declares, sin 
will continue for ever, thus meriting endless punish- 
ment, why a general judgment at all? Its inad- 
equacy is apparent ; for, if the relatively few sins 
of this life demand a general judgment for their 
exhibition and adjustment at the end of this life, 
why will not continually recurring judgments be 
required for the infinitely more numerous sins of 
the eternity to come? How is it that the sins of 



28 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

the brief seventy years allotted to man demand a 
general judgment for their exhibition before the 
face of the whole universe, and the sins of the 
whole eternity to follow require no such exhibition ? 

I might detain you long in pointing out the 
discrepancies between the modified positions of the 
present advanced believers of the doctrine, and 
the attitudes held by former defenders. 

But enough. I call your attention to these dis- 
crepancies for this purpose : That you ma}^ observe 
that while a vast multitude, as has been shown, 
constituting the more intelligent portion, clerical 
and la}^, in all the churches, have abandoned the 
Old Forts, and have confessed the doctrine false, 
these men have likewise abandoned the old argu- 
ments, but are still seeking new ones in defence of 
the old doctrines. 

Let us now pass to notice these new positions 
themselves. We shall, I think, find them as little 
defensible as were the old. 

In the first place, then, sin is not self-perpet- 
uating. The sinner may — often does — continue 
sinful for a protracted period ; but sin itself is not 
self-perpetuating. It is, rather, self-destructive. 

We may find an analogy in the decaying vegetable 
in the streets : all agencies prey upon it ; the very 
forces of Nature dissipate it, and purify the atmos- 
phere that is infected b}^ it. So it is with sin. All 
the forces of the universe are arraj^ed against it. 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 29 

The conscience of the sinner himself ; the conscience 
and general law of society about him ; the deep 
under-tow of Nature ; the ground-swell of the uni- 
verse, and the purposes of Almighty God, — all con- 
spire to crush sin and the sinful schemes of men. 

Look where you will, and you fmd every thing 
compelling this view. God has not vacated his 
throne ; he is not sustaining schemes of corruption ; 
he is not in league with the devil. 

Observe specific examples. Unfortunately we 
are only too well circumstanced to weigh this prob- 
lem in some of its aspects. Our fathers were 
pleased to plant the seeds of a stj^le of slavery in 
our country's soil, more oppressive than which the 
sun never shone upon. It grew with our growth ; 
it shot out its tendrils and fastened like a clinging 
vine to every interest of our entire land. It sub- 
orned Congress, the pulpit, the public conscience, and 
Biblical interpretation to its own purposes ; and, 
seemingly, won heaven and earth to its support. 

Its efforts were not in vain. For a time it moved 
on successfully. Its progress was marked, and its 
bearing lofty. But there were powers superior. 
God was still God. His forces were slowly at 
work. The moral sense of men was not eliminated. 
There necessarily grew up a conflict, a struggle, a 
warfare, which culminated in the manner 3^ou know. 
The result was the breaking of the bonds of the 
slave, and the destruction of an institution that leaves 



30 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

an ineffaceable blot upon our otherwise good name. 
We now understand that instead of the sin of 
slavery being self-perpetuating, its destruction was 
provided for in the moral forces of society, and in 
the providence of Almighty God. 

Look into the pages of histor}^ Read the records 
of any tyrannical reign. Observe that however king 
or emperor may oppress his people and weigh them 
down, he cannot perpetuate his power. The more 
severe the oppression and weight of the burden be- 
come, the more certain are his subjects to rebel, 
and his throne to totter to its fall. His son may 
succeed him and prove as t}' rannical as the father ; 
but a like rebellion will follow. Thus, instead of a 
self-perpetuating power in sin, the forces of the 
universe are invincibly arra^^ed against it, and 
against the schemes of iniquity bound up in it. 

Nor does evil in character, on the whole, tend 
to permanence, as does the good. Good character 
is buttressed by all the invincible energies of God. 
Goodness is in harmony with all enduring things in 
heaven and on earth ; but evil is in dissonance there- 
with. As in general schemes of iniquit}^, so in the 
wickedness of individual character, there are ele- 
ments of antagonism conflicting with the moral 
forces of society. By these forces, permanence in 
evil is absolutel}^ barred. 

I grant you what the Scriptures say, "Evil men 
and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 31 

and being deceived." If this law of society were 
framed for perpetuity, our position would be un- 
tenable ; but this drift is only temporary, and the 
evil consequently is temporary. This is shown in 
the history of the chosen people of God. They 
''waxed worse and worse," corrupting and being 
corrupted, ' ' deceiving and being deceived ; " until, 
having filled up the measure of their wickedness, 
their house was about to be left unto them desolate. 
They were as dead branches ready to be pruned 
away from the vine. But they were to be grafted 
in again, to the inexpressible amazement of the 
apostle, in view of the wondrous wisdom and good- 
ness of God. They were to be aroused from their 
sleep in sin. The hour was coming, when, conscious 
of their wanderings, they should say, '' Blessed is he 
that Cometh in the name of the Lord." 

Something like this often happens with wicked 
men individually. Left to themselves, with no 
missionary effort on their behalf, under no reformer's 
plea, but with rational powers ; with perception, 
reason, and judgment ; with an enlightened con- 
science that distinguishes right and wrong, — we not 
unfrequentl}^ see men walk in the ways of evil until 
character is utterly lost, and hope seems to have 
entirely departed ; and yet from all the various 
ranks of such men we see specimens of the worst 
among them come forth, of their own motion, and 
walk in newness of life. 



32 E^'I)LESS PL'XISHMEXT. 

You remember the ease of the prodigal. That para- 
ble well illustrates this truth. He was a favorite son : 
and I make no doubt had tou stood at the father s 
threshold when he took his leave, you would have 
said. "He is a fine feUow, and will make his mark in 
the world.*' He did : but what a mark ! Having 
taken one false step, the progress is rapid from bad 
to worse. Unbridled passion plunges one into the 
depths : and surprise attends upon awaking to an 
appreciation of the fall. He soon spent his patri- 
mony, and was reduced to want. Fain would he have 
fQled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat. 
and no man gave to him. 

Xot only did no missionary sohcit his return, but 
the elder brother even was displeased at the joyous- 
ness of his welcome. The father, however, had not 
forgotten his son ; and that son. true to the instincts 
of a filial heart, never forgot the parental roof. He 
had squandered his substance, disgraced his kindred, 
and covered himself with shame. But he remem- 
bered there was •• bread enough in his father's house 
and to spare." He rememt^ered that it was his 
father s house : and he said. •• I will arise and go to 
my father." 

That is human nature in an extremity. I grant 
you. manifesting the fruits of divine disciphne in 
debauchery and hcentiousness. May it not be that 
if. in our civilization, we would leave debauchees to 
endure the evils of their debauchery, ministering only 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 33 

to the victims of their sin, that more prodigals would 
arise and go to their father's house? Are we sure 
that we do not curse them deeply in our very char- 
ities? Are we sure that we do not traverse the 
divine methods, and bar the work of human redemp- 
tion? We undertake to improve on those methods, 
as business men have undertaken to improve upon 
the natural laws of trade ; but we rarely go far with- 
out finding ourselves entangled. 

The truth is, this doctrine of the permanence of 
character in evil leaves God out of the account. 
Those who defend it remember sin, guilt, demerit, 
punishment, hell, the devil, every thing indeed that 
the imagination can conjure for evil; but forget the 
infinite God, the merciful Christ, the rejoicing of 
angels over one sinner that repenteth, the prayerful 
yearnings of just men, the abounding grace of 
heaven, the promised victory over sin, and the 
universal subjection of man to Christ, " that God 
may be all in all ! " These things are forgotten ! 
These glowing lights of heaven are blotted out ! 

Now character, in fact, does not on the whole 
tend to permanence in evil, as these varied hints 
serve to show. The problem is not unlike that 
which Malthus — one of the most reputable political 
economists of his age — presents in regard to the 
growth of population. Malthus asserts that popula- 
tion increases geometrically ; while food upon given 
areas can increase only arithmetically. With what- 

3 



3-4 EjYdless punishment. 

ever ratio you start, the geometrical will at length 
outrun the arithmetical ; and hence, he says, popu- 
lation is destined to increase till there will be no 
adequate means of support, and the race will be re- 
duced to starvation. Professor Bowen, of Harvard, 
takes up the proposition and demonstrates that while 
there are certain elements in the problem, which 
taken by themselves tend to the danger threatened, 
there are other influences, such as motives of pru- 
dence and a desire to rise in social position, which 
hold the former in check. He thus demolishes the 
theory of Malthus. 

Xow I grant that if, dealing with a man the 
slave of appetite and passion, you shut him up to 
indulgence in the midst of temptation, at the same 
time blotting out every star of hope, and teaching 
him that he is so corrupt by nature that nothing 
short of a miracle can save him, — you have a good 
preparation for his permanence in evil. It must 
be confessed that the churches have shown a genius 
for convincing men that something like this is the 
ver}' attitude in which God has placed them. 

If, on the other hand, 3'ou place that same man 
where the light of Nature, where the better influences 
of social life, and especially where the manifestations 
of divine grace, shining from the sacred page, and 
through the ministries of a truly Christian church, 
may be enjo3'ed, — the tendency will not be to con- 
tinued evil. There will be, rather, a continual 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE, 35 

rebellion of all that is best within him against evil, 
against yielding to temptation, be that temptation 
whatsoever it ma3\ 

No examples are furnished us in the history of 
the world, so far as either experience or observation 
can testify, justif3'ing the assumption, even in a 
single case, of absolute permanence in evil ; and 
to assume such permanence touching the world to 
come, is to project into the problem influences and 
facts we do not find there, and to exclude not a few 
of those we do find. 

It has seemed to me, as I have meditated upon 
this problem, that the genius of the world was 
taxing its powers to discover how to magnify to the 
maximum the probabilities of evil, and reduce to the 
minimum the probabihties of good. Such cannot be 
called a Christian work. Enter any of the churches, 
to-day, up and down our goodly cit}^, and it will be 
rare if you are not told that the love and mercy of 
God have redeemed such and such a soul on whom 
the terrors of divine wrath had formerly been 
poured out in vain. That fact teaches a philoso- 
phy that the churches in the past have ignored ; 
and because they have ignored it, their power for 
the general redemption of society has been well- 
nigh lost. 

But it is objected that God will force no man's 
will. As men are now free, and rebel against the 
law of God, so they may remain free and continue 



36 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

to rebel ; and if God abandons men to freedom and 
to evil, there is no hope for them. 

It is true that God will force no man's will. He 
will force no man's will toward evil, — remember 
that, as well, — and no man's will toward good. 
But the very work to be accomphshed in man is the 
recovery of the will ; the winning of the heart from 
the way of rebellion, from the attitude of ahenation. 
That work God will do, and is doing continually. 
Ever}' true servant of God, and every follower of 
Christ our Master, is doing more or less to per- 
suade the wills of men ; to put away rebellion ; to 
induce loyal, willing souls to come to God. Dare any 
one affirm that is a work God will not do ? Where 
is the Christian, even in name, that is ready to stand 
upon his feet and say, God makes no effort to win 
rebellious souls, or to make his now rebellious chil- 
dren wiUing and obedient to his law ? 

Let your thought turn for a moment to our text. 
It plainly asserts the power of God over the heart. 
It refers not to the poor alone ; not to the lowly 
woman in attic or cellar ; not to the abandoned out- 
cast in the station-house, the courts, or the prison ; 
but it refers to the great of the earth, who, the 
Scriptures inform us, and we all know, oppress 
their fellows. Of him it declares, — 

" The King's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as 
the rivers of water : He turneth it whithersoever he 
will." 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 37 

Again, the Psalmist sa^^s : — 

' ' My people shall be willing in the day of my 
power." 

Passages of Scripture like these have no elements 
of rhetorical flourish in them ; they are in no danger 
of being misconstrued ; they cannot lead us astra3\ 
But they show us one thing — God, a power for 
good among his people. They show us the God of 
heaven, of whom the Saviour says, ''My father 
worketh hitherto, and I work." Conceive Him, with 
his infinite resources, at '' work'' for the redemption 
of sinful souls ! Conceive Him, standing face to face 
with poor, weak, passionate man, piling him with 
all the persuasives of His illimitable universe, and 
3^et finally discomfited ! Pray, where then remains 
ground for reverence, or encouragement to trust? 
Plainly, if God shall ' ' work " for the winning of 
souls to himself, defeat cannot attend his efforts . 

The defenders of the doctrine of the permanence 
of evil cannot, of course, leave it in this plight. A 
God w^ho holds even the hearts of kings in his hand 
cannot be admitted a perpetual ' ' worker " in the 
field of salvation. He must retire from such a ser- 
vice. Not only must he cease his eflforts to save, 
but he must close the door of human freedom, lest 
the sinner should voluntaril}^ repent, and the cause of 
righteousness triumph. This can be easily efiected. 
God has but to decree, in a final judgment, the per- 
petual sinning of those who die sinful. Such a pen- 



38 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

alt}', it is thought, will meet all the gracious needs 
of the case. Endless sinning will entail endless suf- 
fering ; and so dii'e a judgment will yindicate the 
divine holiness. 

This yitally changes the proposition, and changes 
it immeasurably for the worse. Consider: Here is 
a man born under alien influences ; reared in dark- 
ness, with no adequate culture, intellectual or moral ; 
inhaling pollution with his very first breath. The 
first sound that greets his ears is an oath ; the first 
sight upon which his e3'es rest is obscene. He is 
steeped in the iniquity of that criminal state in whose 
bosom, as in a mould, his moral character is cast. 
He continues, as he has begun, to the end of life ; 
djing, as he has lived, confessedly sinful. 

Xow, the righteous Ruler of all the earth calls 
that sinful soul before him and adjudges him. 
How? Guilty? We all knew that before judg- 
ment. That was clear enough. The sinner him- 
self knew it, dimly, vaguely. Not that is the 
judgment ; but on that admission he adjudges him 
to go on sinning, — not simply of his own free 
will, not b}' the influence of society about him, not 
by the force of moral and social training, but by 
the decree of Almight}^ God himself, — to go on sin- 
ning through vast eternity, with damnation, quick 
and sharp, flowing from every act ! 

And this punishment God inflicts upon him in 
vindication of his own wisdom, power, purity, love of 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE, 39 

righteousness, and the transcendent and infinite 
regard for holiness which ever dwells with the 
Almighty ! 

Now, sa3^ing nothing of the absurdity of the ethics 
which make compulsory acts sinful, pray observe 
how shocking is this sentence ! Were God to cease 
his work against sin, he would cease to be holy. 
What shall we sa}^, when he emplo'ys his infinite 
energies in perpetuating sin, and that through lim- 
itless eternity, — compared to which the sins of a 
human lifetime would be -less than a single ray of 
light to the effulgence of the noonday sun ! 

Suppose an inebriate were brought before one of 
our courts, and, the fact being clearly proved, the 
judge in great compassion should lecture him on 
the awful sin of inebriety, impressing him with the 
fact that it blunts the sensibilities, deadens the con- 
science, undermines the physical constitution, breaks 
the heart of one's wife, blasts the prospects of one's 
children, and curses society in general ; and, after 
expressing great pity for the criminal at the bar 
that he had fallen nnder the influence of this de- 
structive appetite, should proceed to sentence him 
to be inebriated throughout the remainder of his 
life ! Spontaneously the moral sense of the commu- 
nity would burst forth in unutterable indignation. 
And yet, such is the bald, boastful blasphemy that 
has resounded through Tremont Temple week after 
week for the last two years, adorned with all the 



40 E. YD LESS PUNISHMENT, 

cheap tinsel and flourishes of pretended science that 
the imagination of the orator could invent ! 

We come now to our second point, which we shall 
have time to treat but very briefly. 

In the second place, it is said that this appeal — 
which we confidently make, as you will observe — to 
divine goodness, purity, and righteousness, to parry 
the thought that God sentences men to sin as a 
punishment for sin, is not valid ; for, confessing 
that God is now good, and yet that sin and sufl'er- 
ing now exist, it may be equally true that he may 
be eternall}^ good, and 3'et sin and suflfering eternall}' 
remain. 

Friends, as another has shown, this is the argu- 
ment of the atheist. He says : ' ' You believe in a 
God infinitely good ! Look at that volcano pouring 
out ruin upon Hereulaneum and Pompeii ; look at 
that earthquake engulphing thousands, and swalloAv- 
ing down its capacious throat the villages of the 
plain ; look at the devastating wars, ravaging fires, 
and sweeping floods, all under the providence of 
God : and yet you call him good ! Eather let us 
conclude that there is no God I " 

One vastly more respects an atheist who makes 
this argument, than the professed disciple of Christ 
who adduces present sin and suffering as a justifi- 
cation of the doctrine of eternal sin and suffering : 
the one reasons against the character of God, and 
abides the conclusion ; the other reasons to the 



I 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 41 

same end, in like manner, and refuses the conclu- 
sion. 

But let us look at the problem for a moment. 
Ever3'bodj sees that everlasting sin and suffering 
(the fate of the whole universe having been already 
determined) can secure no good. No resulting ben- 
efit solicits our favorable judgment. No sweetening 
element, no single drop in that bitter cup, makes it 
in any degree palatable, or in any measure cooling 
to our parched lips. It is " evil and onlj' evil, and 
that continually." It aims at no good. The condi- 
tion of all is fixed. The saved in heaven are per- 
manent in character and blessedness ; the damned in 
hell are equall}^ permanent in character and sinful- 
ness. No good can come to them in any direction 
whatever. Such results stand for ever arrayed 
against the divine goodness and purpose. They 
may be unavoidably submitted to of God ; never 
welcomed. God maj' still be good, but undeniably 
weak ; that is, no longer God. If sin and suffering 
are limited in duration, a verj' different result will 
follow. The question, then, that naturally presses 
upon our thought is. Can sin and its consequences 
be overruled for good ? 

Nay ; w^ho does not know that transgression has 
been, and therefore clearly ever may be, so over- 
ruled? Take that familiar case, the sin of Joseph's 
brethren, the sons of the old patriarch Jacob. Jeal- 
ous of their brother Joseph, they sold him into 



42 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

slavery to be borne away into Egypt ; and, with 
falsehood on their lips, and with a deceitful prepara- 
tion of Joseph's coat, persuaded the aged patriarch 
that his darling son had been slain by wild beasts. 

The hand of God, however, brought Joseph into 
Pharaoh's court. God informed him of the coming 
years of plenty and the succeeding years of famine. 
Grain was stored in abundance ; and, when the fam- 
ine came, Jacob and his sons, and his sons' sons, 
came down into Egypt to be unconsciousl}^ welcomed 
and blessed by the brother they had WTonged. When 
he made himself known, and shame and confusion 
covered them, Joseph said: "You meant it unto 
evil ; God meant it unto good." 

This is a key to God's providential .dealing with 
sin ; and he who recklessly throws away this ke}' 
voluntaril}^ bars himself from the temple of faith. 
On the part of God, this is not the doing of a little 
wrong as against a great one : it is but emplojing 
an instrumentality for good. Man is the wrong- 
doer ; God is the promoter of good. The fact that 
both deal with the same transaction should not puz- 
zle a philosopher. 

Let us turn to a more conspicuous example. Where 
was there ever presented more pointed and unpar- 
donable sin than in the malice of the Jewish nation 
crucifying the Son of God? And yet we owe to the 
manifestation of divine love, which that tragic scene 
involves, the ultimate salvation of the world. He 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE, 43 

who will turn to Revelation (v. 13), will hear the 
inspired seer in his rapture saying : ' ' And every 
creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and 
under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and 
glor}', and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever ! " 

What transcendent glory illumines this scene ! All 
the sin of the world, all the redemption by Christ, 
come up to view. The congregated universe ascribes 
''blessing, and honor, and glory, and power unto 
Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, 
for ever and ever." How dark was the night of cru- 
cifixion ! How refulgent the da}^ illumined by the 
Sun of Righteousness ! Will not this sin of the 
Jews, overruled of God, promote the redemption 
of the world ? Without the crucifixion, that song of 
giorj^ to the Lamb could never have been sung. 

There doubtless may be in this problem a depth 
and mystery that no human wisdom can fulh' fathom ; 
but we have the key to that mj^stery, in the Provi- 
dence that makes all things issue in good. Who 
does not feel the superiority of such a faith ? Who 
does not feel that to reject this solution, is to leave 
the mystery for ever unsolved? 

When it is conceded that it is possible for God to 
overrule evil for good, an infinite moral necessity is 
created that it shall be so overruled. Now the Psalm- 
ist says, " Surely the wrath of men shall praise thee : 



44 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain ; " which 
is but another way of saying, " No evil shall arise that 
shall not be made to serve th}^ purposes of grace." 

If this result be possible, can any one doubt that 
it is the best possible ? Can any one doubt that in- 
finite wisdom, goodness, and power are committed, 
by their very infinit}^, to the best possible result? 
Let no man sa}' that endless sin and suffering present 
the best issue possible ! No one can say that ; the 
Christian sensibilities of the whole world, both of 
believers and unbelievers, cr}^ out against it. Rea- 
son, therefore, refuses the conclusion. Nor let any 
one assume that a world entirely free from sin and 
suffering would have been the best. No man is wise 
enough to say that. Infinite wisdom has, in the fact, 
decided otherwise. 

Here, then, reverent faith must rest. A world in 
which the sin and suffering is circumscribed and 
limited, often made visibl}^ instrumental in the fur- 
therance of good, and, in the providence of God, 
alwa^'s capable of being so directed, — is the actual 
world that God has created, and in which he has 
placed us. No man can impugn it. When God 
pronounced it " verj^ good," no man can say that 
its entire future was not open before him. 

With the two hj'potheses, therefore, in mind, — 
namely, limited evil, overruled for good ; and end- 
less evil, because endless, impossible to be so over- 
ruled, — reason and faith cannot hesitate in the 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 45 

choice. And when the Christian Church persistently 
urges the latter, with the weight of mere human 
authority, with metaphysical, sometimes recondite, 
and sometimes palpabl}' partisan reasons, it assumes 
a fearful responsibility touching the wide-spread 
scepticism it begets. The vindication of the divine 
goodness on such ground, — and especially on the 
ground that Almighty God, the Judge of all the 
earth, will finally sentence howsoever wicked men 
to the further perpetration of unlimited evil and the 
endurance of the suffering it brings, without the 
slightest aim at any good, with a combination of cir- 
cumstances peremptoril}" excluding any after good, 
— I say, the vindication of the divine character on 
such ground is absolutely impossible. 

Suppose I should summon a surgeon to a patient 
in your presence. Suppose he should employ his 
skill, not for the good of the patient, not for his 
restoration to soundness, if in any wise diseased, 
nor even for the saving of his life, — but simply for 
his torment and anguish ! Suppose he should in- 
stitute a systematic course of torture, paring the 
extremities in a wa}^ to inflict the most refined and 
prolonged suffering ; beginning with the smallest, 
treating them one by one ; removing skin, muscle, 
flesh, sinews, tendons, bone, all, — till only a limb- 
less trunk should remain ! Suppose the process 
should be continued upon the trunk itself, adding 
piece-meal torment as long as the breath of life 



46 EXDLESS PUXISHMEXT. 

could be preserved ! — and all, ostensibly, for the 
exhibition of his skill, wisdom, goodness, and 
power I 

Startling and absurd as the supposition is. I de- 
liberately and reverently declare my profound con- 
viction that such a surgeon, devil though he is. can 
be vindicated with infinite facility and readiness, 
compared with such a God as is implied in the prop- 
osition under consideration. The one is the barbar- 
ism of an hour : the other, of vast eternity ! Both 
are evil ; but the one as much transcends the other 
as infinity transcends the finite I 

Thirdly and finally : Having seen that the defen- 
ders of modified Orthodoxy have surrendered the 
specific passages of Sciipture on which they formerly 
rehed ; and having subjected the modified proposi- 
tions to a hasty examination. — we have before us a 
vague defence of the doctrine of endless punishment 
3'et to be confronted. It is this : Whatever may be 
true of specific passages, the whole •• trend" of the 
Bible is to the doctrine of endless woe. 

Well, my fiiends, there are some things very 
patent about this proposition. The way Scripture 
language strikes one depends very much upon cir- 
cumstances. If you have been reared to conceive 
of the future life as exclusively the world of retribu- 
tion ; if it has been habitually described to you as 
more plentifully furnished with furnaces of fire than 
with the glories of Paradise ; if you have been 



THE NEW FORTS INDEFENSIBLE. 47. 

taught to think that every reference to fire belongs 
to the next world, — your feelings will be conformed 
thereto. The Bible will be interpreted spontaneously 
according to habit. Hence, it is a matter of educa- 
tion, of verbal association, of prejudice, and feeling. 
Whenever was mentioned fire, or damnation, or hell, 
it would seem to you that eternity was blazing with 
these anomalous means of grace. 

But had 3'ou been otherwise instructed ; had 3"ou 
been taught to resolve this rhetoric into plain com- 
mon sense ; had xow been nurtured in a simple under- 
standing of tlie Bible, a quick apprehension of its 
great moral truths, and a hearty reliance upon its 
gracious promises, — you would not feel that the 
trend of the Bible was towards eternal woe. 

Moreover, those who say this overlook the fact 
that there are various matters treated in the Bible 
besides punishment, the trend of which we might 
well consider. For example : What is the doctrine 
of the Bible in respect to the pity, graciousness, and 
loving-kindness of Almighty God? What, of the 
self-denial and self-sacrifice of Christ, — tasting death 
for every man, giving himself a ransom for all man- 
kind ? What, touching the mercy of God, many times 
affirmed to endure for ever (Psalm cxxxvi.) ? What, 
concerning that gospel grace of which it is said, 
"Where sin abounded, grace did much more 
abound"? What is the doctrine of the Bible re- 
specting the victory of Christ, — when he shall have 



48 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

subjected all souls to himself, and shall have deliv- 
ered up the kingdom to the Father, " that God may 
be all in all"? 

Trend of the Scriptures, indeed ! There are some 
appetites that relish onl}' the fulminating rhetoric of 
fire. There are theological iconoclasts who will 
strike down Jehovah himself, and extinguish the 
light of his everlasting love, that they may save 
their darling flames. The quality and wisdom of 
this sort of Christianity will come before us on 
another occasion. 

Meantime, friends, if any who hear me must lean 
upon authority, there are enough educated, intelli- 
gent doubters of the doctrine of endless punishment 
who have recently come forth from all the various 
churches of Christendom, throughout the more civ- 
ilized countries of the world, to create a reasonable 
doubt of its truth ; and, I submit, if there was ever 
a case, under the whole heaven, where the doubt 
should be given to the prisoner at the bar, while at 
the same time, in the very cherishing of the doubt, 
3^ou defend the wisdom and goodness of Almighty 
God, this is that case. 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. 49 



III. 



IS THAT A CHRISTIAN^ TEMPER WHICH 
EAGEKLY SEEKS FOR NEW DEFENCES, 
WHEN THE OLD HAYE BEEN SWEPT 
AWAY ? 

" Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." — 
St. Luke ix. 65. 

TN continuing our discussion of the doctrine of 
-^ Endless Punishment, we invite your attention 
to-night to the following special topic : — 

' ' Is that a Christian temper which eagerly seeks 
for new defences, when the old have been swept 
away ? " 

Zeal for party often triumphs over zeal for God. 
Professions of an exclusive desire to honor God and 
promote the cause of truth are often found coupled 
with gross misrepresentations of one's neighbor ; and 
out of a partisan spirit not unfrequently springs the 
spirit of malignant detraction. 

James and John, 3'ou will remember, — faithless 
and powerless before the lunatic, — were amazed at 
the mighty power of God who healed him through 
Christ. And yet when these same disciples failed 

4 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



to find accommodations in Samaria for the Master, 
' ' because his face was as though he would go to 
Jerusalem," they were anxious to call down fire 
from God out of heaven, — quoting the example 
of Elias, which they entirely misinterpreted, — and 
received the severe rebuke, "Ye know not what 
manner of spirit ye are of." 

We are also told of certain of the synagogue of 
the Libertines, and others, who in their great zeal 
could condescend to suborn men to testifj" that 
Stephen had uttered " blasphemous words against 
Moses and against God," and yet who were ready 
to stone Stephen to death. 

There are many influences which tend to nurture 
a partisan spirit. The force of education ; aversion 
to change before the world ; shrinking from the crit- 
icisms which changes incur, and a desire to maintain 
personal consistency^, — these not unfrequently bind 
men to silence, and hold them as continued props 
of doctrines, faith in which they have already 
surrendered. But the chief of these influences is 
the temper which error begets. Error necessaril}^ 
breathes its own spirit. It cannot do the work of 
truth, — preciselj^ that: no more, no less. It colors 
the mind in which it dwells. All things take on the 
same hue. If faith be bitter, the heart will be bit- 
ter ; and bitter fountains cannot send forth sweet 
waters. This is especially manifest in the religious 
controversies of all ages. 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. 61 

The bitterness of the Augustinians against the 
Pelagians, in the early centuries ; of the Calvinists 
against the followers of Servetus, in the later centu- 
ries ; and of the so-called Evangelical world against 
the Universalists and Unitarians in our own day, — 
are marked examples of implacable partisan zeal. 
Such a temper cannot weigh evidence ; nor will it 
relinquish an error, however thoroughly exploded. 

Most unseemly are the labors that spring from this 
sectarian zeal ; and never have been exhibited works 
more unseemly than are those witnessed in our own 
day. Doctrines from which our common humanity 
shrinks, and shrinks all the more palpably the more 
Christian it is ; defended b}^ arguments hoary with 
the moss of centuries, but exploded by the best 
scholars in every successive age ; holding their way 
on to our own time, when the enlightenment of the 
Church can bear them no longer, and scholars on 
both sides of the Atlantic, and from every sect on 
the face of the earth, have confessed the insufficiency 
of their proofs, — are surrendered, sometimes only 
partially, warily, evasively ; sometimes openly, 
frankly, gladlj^, and with gratitude to God. 

At the same time, there are others who, — them- 
selves practically conceding the levelling of the old 
forts, — with an industry worth}^ of a better cause, 
seek for new defences of those doctrines ; resorting, 
not only to misrepresentations as to the position of 
others, but to adroit statements touching their own. 



52 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



The honest and earnest examination of supposed 
proofs of a doctrine so terrible as that of endless 
punishment, is a worthy and noble labor ; but when, 
after such examination, those proofs are practically 
confessed invalid, and one after another of them, as 
we have shown on previous occasions, has been sur- 
rendered, until all the leading ones are gone, — to 
still continue eagerlj^ searching here and there, on 
the right hand and on the left, ransacking heaven 
and earth, to find some new, though it be but ab- 
struse, consideration that may suggest a seeming 
probability (and at most only a probability) of the 
truth of the doctrine, is an unseemly work. 

When I have arraigned my neighbor on some grave 
charge, and all the evidence I had to lean on to sus- 
tain that charge has been clearly taken from my 
hands in a court of justice, — what sort of a man am 
I, to go scouring the neighborhood, up and down, to 
find some additional rumor or scandal to make good 
the libel against him ? Xot a little of that sort of 
work is being done to-da}' in defence of the doctrine 
of endless punishment. 

First of all is the palpable misrepresentation of 
Universalism. Xot yet given over is the charge that 
Universalism makes " death to be the savior of men." 
Our distinguished and boasted ' ' scientific " lecturer, 
in a neighboring hall, tells 3^ou that Universalism 
formerly regarded ' ' death as a bath that washed out 
all corruption." And yet Mr. Ballon, the elder, to 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES, 53 

whom is commonly assigned the honor of being the 
father of that abomination, says, in a h^^mn well 
known and often used, and found in both collections 
here before 3^ou, revealing how grossly he is maligned 
by the imputation, — 

" In God's eternity 

There shall a day arise, 
"When all the race of man shall be 

With Jesus in the skies. 
As night before the rays 

Of morning flees away, 
Sin shall retire before the blaze 

Of God's eternal day." 1 

Surel}^ that is not salvation by death ! And this 
charge is made after our lecturer had been informed, 
by the united voice of our ministry in the neighbor- 
hood, that such a doctrine is "alike repudiated by 
all," — a declaration he is pleased to consider as 
limited to "all of us to-daj'." 

Again, he would tell us that so marked were the 
differences of opinion, half a century ago, between 
the Universalists and Eestorationists, that the former 
withdrew from the latter. This statement is made 
to show that Universalists have to-day practically 
become Eestorationists, because tolerating them as 
it is alleged thej^ formerly would not. His state- 
ment is exactly the reverse of the truth. The feel- 
ing demanding separation was not cherished on the 

1 Church Harmonies, hymn 386. 



54 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

part of Universalists. A few of the Eestorationists, — 
less than a score, I think, in number, — more thafi half 
a century ago, did withdraw from the general bod}' 
of Universalists, and establish a separate, if not 
rival, association ; but in a short time the}' were 
lost to the Church, to themselves, and to the world, 
as their organization soon fell to pieces. 

Universalism, from the beginning until now, has 
been simph^ and soleh' the doctrine of the ultimate 
gathering of all souls in purity unto God. Those 
who surrender the doctrine of endless punishment 
and do not accept the doctrine of annihilation, are 
of necessity Universalists. Whether, in refusing to 
confess it, an}' of these are "crucifying to them- 
selves the Son of God afresh," and still ''putting 
him to an open shame" (Heb. vi. 6), I leave the 
candid hearer to judge. 

Equally adroit, is our lecturer in presenting his 
own position touching the current Orthodoxy of the 
time. He alleges that Orthodoxy is maligned, or, as 
he expresses it, "misrepresented, in the roughest 
and rankest manner, by the declaration that infants 
are lost ; " while, at the same time, he himself has 
not repudiated the usual doctrines of the fall of 
Adam, original sin, and total depravity. Is it quite 
clear that infants, totally depraved, " striking against 
the infinite bosses of God's buckler," — whatever 
that gracious armorial figure may mean, — " will not 
2:lance downward"? 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. O^ 

They are again misrepresented, he tells us, by the 
imputation of the doctrine of literal fire and brim- 
stone. He himself ostensibly repudiates what he is 
pleased to call the ' ' Dantean doctrines of fire ; " and 
then proceeds to assert that the spirit may take on 
a spiritual body, into which all pains and pangs may 
strike their roots, and possibly present something as 
near like unto fire as these spiritual bodies are hke 
unto physical. Very likely ; but how near, pray, is 
that? 

If he attempts to prop the falling theory of end- 
less punishment by authority of the poets, he is 
equalty unfortunate. Mr. Whittier, it is well known, 
in his poem entitled ''The Eternal Goodness," says : 

"Not mine to look where cherubim 
And seraphs cannot see ; 
But nothing can be good in him, 
Which evil is in me." 

Again : — 

" I know not what the future hath 
Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 
His mercy underlies." 

And again : — 

" I know not where his islands lift 
Their f ronded palms in air, 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care." 

To rebut this, and to show that the poet, in a 
riper conviction, had a ^^ear later surrendered this 



56 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

hope, the Tremont Temple lecturer quotes, among 
other stanzas, the following hypothesis, as though it 
were a matured judgment :, — 

" For ever round the mercy seat, 

The guiding lights of love shall burn ; 
But what if, habit bound, thy feet 

Shall lack the will to turn % 
What if thine eye refuse to see, 

Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail, 
And thou a willing captive be. 

Thyself thy own dark jail % " 

And yet the lecturer omits the closing stanza, in 
which Whittier rebukes doubt of the unforsaking 
love of God : — 

" To doubt the love that fain would break 
The fetters from thy self-bound limb, 
And dream that God can thee forsake 
As thou f orsakest him." 

Of about the same date, and still clearer in its 
hope, is his poem on "The Divine Compassion." 
He asks, — 

"While sin remains, and souls in darkness. 
Can heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell % " 

To this he answers, — 

" Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream, 
A wind of heaven blows coolly m ; 
Fainter the awful discords seem. 

The smoke of torment grows more thin. 
Tears quench the burning soil, and thence 
Spring sweet pale flowers of penitence ; 
And through the dreary realm of man's despair, 
Star-crowned an angel walks, and lo ! God's hope is there! 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. 57 

" Is it a dream % Is heaven so high 

That pity cannot breathe its air ? 
Its happy eyes for ever diy, 

Its holy lips without a prayer ? 
My God ! My God ! If thither led 
By thy free grace unmerited, 
No crown nor palm be mine, but let me keep 
A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep." 

And even in his poem, entitled "The Cry of a 
Lost Soul," Whittier makes his hope to shine in the 
closing stanza : — 

" ^ Father of all ! ' he urges his strong plea, 
* Thou lovest all : thy erring child may be 
Lost to himself, but never lost to thee ! ' " 



" ' Wilt thou not make, eternal source and goal ! 
In thy long years, life's broken circle whole. 
And change to praise the cry of a lost soul ? ' " 

Such is the author whom our lecturer would force 
to 1)6 a prop in the falling temple of endless woe ! 

When he is confronted with the passage, "As in 
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive," he feels the force of it, and thinks to parry 
its effect bj^ saving that it cannot be fulfilled until 
after the general judgment ; because then the separa- 
tion will be made. Let it be so ; it is true that all 
shall be made alive in Christ notwithstanding. 

But where is his evidence of a " general," mean- 
ing universal, judgment, that shall literally separate 
one class of mankind from another, — a doctrine, in 
this form and shape, very generally surrendered? It 



58 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

comes from a misinterpretation and misapplication 
of Matt. xxY. 31-46, the fulfilment of which, as 
shown on a former occasion, is limited, in Matt. 
xxiv. 34, to that generation, — a parallel to which 
ma}' be found in Matt. xvi. 27, ^%\ and there, again, 
limited to the lifetime of some who heard the Saviour 
speak. 

He deals also with the words ''everlasting" and 
'' eternal," and is compelled, as a scholar, to con- 
cede their ambiguity ; and yet, leaning on the as- 
sumption that punishment is as enduring as life, 
he deduces the endlessness of punishment from the 
application thereto of the term '' everlasting," which 
he would not at all need, were his assumption well 
founded. 

Again, he tells us "there are six universals in 
the Bible, which man}' have mistaken for a seventh, 
namely, universal salvation." His six universals 
which are in the Bible, while the seventh is not, 
are ' ' the universal atonement, the universal benev- 
olence of God, the universal providential care of 
God, the universal prevalence of the gospel, the 
universal resurrection, and the universal reign of 
Christ." Let us examine these several universals. 

" Universal atonement " — what means it? That 
is a question for exposition. The Bible sense of the 
term "atonement" is " at-one-ment," — the word be- 
ing used but once in the Bible (Rom. v. 11) , in which 
case we are said to have received it. Universal 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. 69 

atonement, therefore, is universal " at-one-ment," — 
equivalent to universal salvation. 

Again, the old Calvinistie doctrine of the atone- 
ment was, that Christ died to save all the elect, and 
that he would certainly save all for whom he died. 
That doctrine has been modified by Arminianism, in 
which the Calvinism of to-day concurs, to the effect 
that Christ " died for all men." Accept the modern 
doctrine of universal atonement, which our lecturer 
gives us, and join it to his own Calvinism, as respects 
its efficacy, and we have Christ dying for all men, 
and assuredly saving all for whom he dies. Thus 
the Calvinistie atonement, with the Arminian annex, 
gives us again universal salvation. 

Nor is the fact of " the universal benevolence of 
God" less pregnant with hope. Has our lecturer 
considered what the word ' ' benevolence " means ? 
Benevolence is well-wishing ; a disposition to do 
good. Universal benevolence, a disposition to do 
good to all, — to every creature God has made. But 
if an infinite Being wishes well to every creature, 
what can prevent his wishes from flowering forth 
into deeds? Thus universal benevolence becomes 
universal beneficence, — universal well-wishing, uni- 
versal well-doing. Or (which is the same thing), 
the infinite disposition of God to do good to every 
creature cannot be barred from doing the good : 
which, again, is universal salvation, and places that 
doctrine in the Bible, on the lecturer's own premise. 



60 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

We have thus involved beforehand the third ' ' uni- 
versal," — " the universal providential care of God." 
Journey the wide world over, and there is not a sin- 
gle lonely soul in heaven or on earth that is not held 
in the palm of the Almighty's hand, and that is not 
the object of his infinite and universal care. ''Are 
not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of 
them shall not fall on the ground without 3^our 
Father. But the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered" (Matt. x. 29, 30). Who will not be con- 
tent with such a Providence? Who can fear neg- 
lect? Who, leaning on such care, cannot bear any 
divinely-appointed sorrow ? All worlds are one : all 
places heaven. Here, or elsewhere, we are the chil- 
dren of the Father, and cannot distrust his love. 
The truth is, the inspired meaning has dropped out 
of the sacred words. AYe have heard these benefi- 
cent phrases so long associated with doctrines that 
nullif}^ them, that we do not know what is in the 
Bible, nor the full salvation embraced in the Father's 
universal care. But let us go on. 

''The universal prevalence of the gospel." Our 
lecturer is right. The promise of this is in the Bible. 
' ' And they shall teach no more every man his neigh- 
bor, and ever}^ man his brother, saving, ' Know the 
Lord ; ' for the}^ shall all know me, from the least of 
them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord" 
(Jer. xxxi. 34). " For the earth shall be full of the 
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea " 






UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES, 61 

(Isa. xi. 9). "And I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto me" (John xii. 32). 
''The isles shall wait for his law" (Isa. xlii. 4). 
Think of this. The gospel prevails where it takes 
effect ; where it is believed and obe^^ed. The uni- 
versal prevalence of the gospel is universal belief 
in and obedience to the gospel ; and that is universal 
salvation. 

Again, " the universal resurrection." Eight here, 
also. '' Now, that the dead are raised, even Moses 
showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the 
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the 
God of Jacob " (Luke xx. 37). The apostle hoped 
for the resurrection of the dead, "both of the just 
and the unjust" (Acts xxiv. 15). Now, call to 
mind the resurrection state, as described by St. 
Paul (1 Cor. XV. and 2 Cor. v.) : immortal, incor- 
ruptible, spiritual, in the image of the heavenl}^, 
with the sting of death (sin) destroyed, and victory 
over death finally achieved ; death itself having been 
swallowed up in victory. " So, when this mortal 
shall have put on immortality, and this corruptible 
shall have put on incorruption ; " when victory over 
death is achieved, and the sting of death destroyed, 
— then will have transpired a universal resurrection 
which involves universal salvation. 

Or, finally; "The universal reign of Christ." 
What is it for Christ to reign in any soul ? It is that 
his truth shall have taken effect in that soul ; it is 



62 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

that he shall have established his throne therein ; it 
is that that soul shall have jieldecl willing obedience 
to Christ, and voluntaril}^ become his servant. The 
universal reign of Christ, therefore, is the universal 
dominion of Christ in human hearts, b}' the power 
of his truth. He must reign till he shall have 
accomplished this, — till he shall have "subdued 
all things unto himself." Then '' shall he deliver up 
the kingdom to the Father," that '' God ma}' be all 
in all" (1 Cor. xv. 25-28). This, again, is univer- 
sal salvation. 

Instead, therefore, of these six " universals " being 
in the Bible, with universal salvation excluded, — 
resting on these alone, universal salvation is six 
times emphatically involved, being embraced in 
every one of them. 

Dissatisfied, apparently, with the progress he had 
thus made, our lecturer flies to the expedient of a 
decision by majorities ; telling us that the question 
between universal salvation and endless punishment 
has been tried in the high court of public opinion, in 
many successive ages, and decided for endless pun- 
ishment. But he did not tell us that during several 
of the early centuries the decision was for Univer- 
salism ; nor did he tell us that the most intelligent 
judges in all these later ages dissented at ever}' trial 
from the common verdict. Least of all did he tell 
us that a majority" can settle nothing in abstract 
principles, or in those high things about which the 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES, 63 

multitude know little. If we settle questions by the 
majority, what shall we say of the Copernican sys- 
tem of Astronomy? If it is decided by the majority, 
shall we not re-establish the doctrine of a local hell ? 
If we decide questions by majorities, who will to-day 
deny the truth of the doctrine of literal fire and 
brimstone? Not only does the heathen world, which 
makes the majority of all races, believe it, but large 
portions also of the Catholic and Greek Churches, 
which make a majority of Christendom, believe it. 
Besides, a multitude of Protestants have not 3^et 
"gotten out of those woods." They are where the 
lecturer himself intimates that so many others are — 
''in Dantean fires." ''Let no man," says he, 
"whistle on this theme until he is out of the Dan- 
tean forest." 

In all these reasonings of our distinguished lect- 
urer, we continually find betrayals of his sense of 
the in conclusiveness of his arguments. I therefore 
again submit, that in every court of justice where 
there is a reasonable doubt in respect to law or evi- 
dence, the benefit of that doubt should be given to 
the prisoner at the bar ; especially when, at the same 
time, it best defends the honor of the judge. 

But do you not perceive that these remarks of our 
lecturer are only a plajdng around the subject ; and 
that, when he comes at length to ground his argument, 
he rests on the assumption of the final permanence 
of evil character? He thinks he has sometimes seen 



64 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

that peiinanence attained even in this world ; and, 
though occasional recoveries from among the worst 
of men are witnessed, he is disposed to regard them 
as "exceptions which confirm the rule." Why should 
he not rather regard them as the ' ' first-fruits " of 
an abundant harvest ? These are recovered by the 
feeble appeals of men : are not the persuasives of 
God greater ? If by these means onl}^ a few sheaves 
are gathered, may we not expect at length to glean 
the entire field ? He guesses that character becomes 
permanent in some instances only in this world ; 
but dogmatically assumes that it will become per- 
manent in all instances in the world to come, — as 
though the energies of Almighty God were to be 
employed in perpetuating evil, rather than in pro- 
moting the moral enlightenment and recovery of the 
world ! 

T have already called your attention to the instance 
of the disciples, faithless and powerless, who could 
not heal the lunatic, and were amazed at the mighty 
power of God by which Christ healed him. It is 
reserved for mam' a soul, looking upon the leprosy 
and lunacy of sin, to be still more greatly amazed 
at the mighty power of God, when Christ shall have 
cleansed and restored them. The ancient promise 
holds good: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they 
shall be as white as snow ; though they be red like 
crimson, they shall be as wool " (Isaiah i. 18). 

The temper of mind and heart so widely mani- 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. 65 

fested in eagerl}^ doubting the power and grace of 
God, is not the temper of the patient and forgiving 
Christ. Go, listen to the low-breathed prayer of the 
devout Christian mother as she bends over the cold 
remains of a wa3^ward son, suddenly stricken down. 
Conceive her, in the midst of the crowd in Tremont 
Temple, listening to the lecturer emphasizing the 
assumption of the final impenitence of those who 
die in sin, and the permanence of their unutterable 
anguish ; and imagine her swinging her handkerchief 
and joining in the rapturous applause ! The very 
suggestion is scarcely less than blasphemy against a 
mother's love. 

The Saviour so loved the world that he gave 
himself for it. " For a good man some would 
even dare to die ; but God commendeth his love 
tow^ard us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ 
died for us" (Rom. v. 7, 8). "If an}' man have 
not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Rom. 
viii. 9). "Every one that loveth is born of God" 
(1 John iv. 7) ; and love, — that is to saj^, charity, — 
as St. Paul tells us, " believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things, and never faileth" 
(1 Cor. xiii). Everj' truly Christian heart " rejoices 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Pet. i. 8) , 
when the supposed evidences of the doctrine of end- 
less punishment are found to be invalid ; but the mod- 
ern disciples of Orthodox}^ clothe themselves in sack- 
cloth. Their countenances, apparentl}^, kindle with 

6 



66 



EXDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



delight, and their J03' bursts forth in loudest applause, 
only when the thunderings of the orator quicken their 
confidence in the perpetual thunderings of infinite 
wrath I I do neither the orator nor the audience any 
injustice. Having satisfied both himself and them 
that the doctrine in question is true, and ought to 
be true, he adds : ''I am glad that what ought to be 
is;" and thej' applauded the remark.^ Are we re- 
turning to the days when the saints in heaven were 
represented as looking with satisfaction upon the 
woes of the lost? 

Contrast these exhibitions with the temper of 
Christ himself. Look upon that wondrous grave 
of Lazarus ! See the bereaved sisters, Mar}' and 
Martha, bowed down in lamentation, their ejTS 
brimming with tears ! The Lord had been sum- 
moned. There he stands weeping with them, not- 
withstanding he is about to restore the sleeping- 
brother to their loving embrace. But Tremont 
Temple resounds with applause at the supposed 
proofs that the damned in hell, however loved by 
saintly hosts, are never to be restored I Jesus 
laments over Jerusalem, warning its inhabitants 
that their house should be left unto them desolate ; 
that the}' should not see him henceforth until they 
should say, ''Blessed is he that cometh in the name 
of the Lord" (Matt, xxiii. 39). But some of the 
modern followers of Christ rejoice at the supposed 

^ The -^Boston Daily Advertiser," March 22, 1878. 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES. 67 

indications that millions of sinners will never be 
brought to sa}", "Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord " ! " There is joy in the presence 
of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth" 
(Luke XV. 10). There is applause in Tremont Tem- 
ple at ever}^ supposed proof that milhons of sinners 
never will repent ! 

Christian, forsooth ! Why, this temper does not 
rise to the level of respectable heathenism ! Zoro- 
aster saj's : ' ' To be insensible to the sufferings of our 
fellow-creatures is the most dangerous of diseases." 
Is that disease afflicting the Tremont Temple crowd ? 
Let us hope that they will not furnish an example 
of '' permanence in evil." ' Let us hope that, at some 
time, the}^ will come to know "what manner of spirit 
they are of." 

It may be, friends, that the most easity-besetting 
sin of that people, as of many another people, con- 
sists in thinking that others are so much worse than 
themselves that God, with all the riches of his grace, 
cannot save them. I have desired simpl}- to draw 
aside that veil, and let you observe what is the tem- 
per that rules in this court, in the re-trial of the 
cause, — Endless Punishment versus Universal Sal- 
vation. For m3^self, I prefer to believe somewhat 
more in God, though it should necessitate that I 
believe somewhat less in the devil. 

Great and astonishing as is this zeal for a bad 
cause, it is not — thank God ! — an invincible zeal. 



68 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

Multitudes have had their e^^es opened to the Hght ; 
multitudes more are finding a quiet and private com- 
fort in the growing hopes begotten in their souls. 
There was a time when the disciples of our Lord 
were weak and powerless ; and when he was ar- 
rested and tried as a malefactor, they were ' ' scat- 
tered, ever}^ man to his own.'' But when the might}' 
power of God had been so gloriously manifested in 
the raising of Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead, 
those same disciples became suddenl}^ strong, able 
to endure great sacrifices, and many of them yielded 
their lives in defence of the gospel. 

Let us, mj^ friends, seek to recognize and cherish 
the spirit that made the disciples thus morally vig- 
orous. The world has its pitfalls ; the way of the 
transgressor is hard ; there are obstacles to his prog- 
ress in that way ; there are storms beating upon the 
head of him who is careless of his aims in life. But 
God does not abandon him. He made him for Him- 
self. He waits his recover3\ ' ' Thou art worthy, 
O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for 
thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure 
they are and were created" (Rev. iv. 11). 

God's methods are well chosen. His plans have 
no elements of weakness. His agencies are fitted to 
theu' work. When he appoints an instrumentality 
for the sah^ation of men, that instrumentality will 
assuredly succeed. God does not hurry his work. 
You plant your seed in the spring-time, and do not 



UNCHRISTIAN DEFENCES, 69 

expect to reap until the harvest. Many an enterprise 
waits years for the maturing of its promise and its ul- 
timate fulfilment. In like manner, many a soul born 
in ignorance lives long years in that ignorance, and 
afterwards comes into the light. Who shall sa}' that 
the multitudes, now in the darkness and oppression 
of error, are excluded from the providential care of 
Almighty God ? Who shall say that they will never 
come into the light of his presence ; that the Sun 
of Righteousness will never illumine the world ; that 
the work of redemption will never be complete ; 
that Christ will never ' ' see of the travail of his 
soul, and be satisfied ; " that the understandings of 
men will never be penetrated by divine truth, nor 
the souls of men filled with love to their Father and 
their God ? Let those think thus who will ; but let 
us cherish the great hopes of the gospel of grace. 
Let us remember that the more we love, the more 
we can believe ; and the less we love, the more we 
shall doubt. Let us remember that the greatest 
error the church can commit, is so to interpret the 
Scriptures and the government of God as to turn 
the heart of the world from the Lord God who 
made us. 



70 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



IV. 



IF MORAL IN ITS USTFLUENCE, WHY WAS 
IT REJECTED OF GOD, AS A MOTIVE TO 
OBEDIENCE, FOR AT LEAST FOUR THOU- 
SAND YEARS? 

*' I BESEECH TOU THEREFORE, BRETHREN, BY THE MERCIES 
OF God, THAT YE PRESENT YOUR BODIES A LIVING SAC- 
RIFICE, HOLY, ACCEPTABLE UNTO GOD, WHICH IS YOUR 
REASONABLE SERVICE." — Roilians xW. \. 

TN the three preceding lectures we have considered, 
-■- first, the yer}^ wide rejection of all the prominent 
and long- credited grounds of the doctrine of Endless 
Punishment. By many the doctrine itself has also 
been rejected ; while others, who still adhere to it, 
place it on new grounds so utterly irreconcilable with 
the old foundations as to amount to a logical removal 
of them. Secondly, we have endeavored to show 
that the new grounds on which Orthodox}^ is made to 
rest b}^ its present defenders cannot be maintained ; 
and, thirdl}^, that the temper of mind which, finding 
the old proofs of the doctrine taken away, eagerty 
seeks for new, is not only not a Christian temper, 



1 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 71 

but does not rise even to the level of respectable 
heathenism, as tested by the ethics of Zoroaster 
himself. 

To-night, we ask 3^our attention to the topic : ' ' If 
the doctrine of endless punishment be true, and if its 
influence is moral, why was it rejected of God, as 
a motive to obedience, for at least four thousand 
years ? " 

First, 3^ou will expect me to consider the fact 
which makes the premise of this query. In raising 
the question whether the Old Testament, covering a 
period of nearly four thousand years, does or does 
not teach the doctrine of endless punishment, you 
will naturally look for evidence to those eras and 
crises in history, and to the enunciation of law and 
the execution of judgments, with which that period 
abounds. 

First of all, there rise up before us the great pro- 
genitors of our race. God, having created Adam 
and Eve, and placed them in the Garden, gives them 
certain permissions and lays upon them certain pro- 
hibitions, — enforcing the latter by a very distinct 
enunciation of penalty : '' In the day that thou eatest 
thereof, thou shalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 17). Now 
remember, friends, that our first parents were looking 
out upon the world totally inexperienced. Remember 
that the}' had not observed, in all probabilitj^, even a 
single instance of animal mortalit}", much less had 
they dreamed of their own death. There had been 



72 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

no revelation whatever made to them in respect to a 
future hfe. They cannot be supposed to have enter- 
tained even the shghtest notion, at this early stage 
of their experience, touching the subject of immor- 
tality. In all probability that question had not arisen 
in their minds. They were children in thought, and 
knowledge, and observation ; and before them was 
placed a certain prohibition, with the declaration that 
in the da}' that they shall transgress that prohibition, 
they " shall surel}' die." 

Now, it is scarcely too much to sa}' that they could 
not have known, at first blush, what the term ''die" 
meant at all; but, when the day of their transgres- 
sion had gone b}', they would quite well know it did 
not mean the extinguishment of phj^sical life. And 
besides, as whatever it does mean was to be expe- 
rienced in the day in which they should transgress, 
they would be turned back upon themselves to con- 
sider what had befallen them ; and would become 
aware of their lost innocence, and of that self-con- 
demnation and darkness of spirit which their trans- 
gression had brought upon them. To a fuller sense 
of this moral desolation their expulsion from the 
garden would probabl}' awaken them. I submit that 
in all reason they could not go bej^ond this, as in 
reason we cannot for a moment suppose the Father 
intimated any thing else than this. Least of all can 
it be assumed that God wrapped up in that one word 
" die," not only moral condemnation, but ph3'sical 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT 73 

death, and infinite woe bej^ond the grave, as the 
theology of the world has so long asserted. 

Well, the first pair did not long remain alone. 
Children were born unto them ; and these children 
fell out by the way. Cain slew Abel : a foul deed, — 
the primal murder among all the creatures of God ! 
And 3^et, how little may Cain have known of the 
enormit}^ of that crime ! However this may be, you 
will agree with me that it was a trul}^ fitting occasion 
on which the most sharpl^^-barbed arrows in the 
quiver of God's wrath should be displayed before 
him ; when eternal woe, if in store, should be dis- 
tinctly announced. Nothing of the kind transpired. 
Matters were left to take their natural course. Con- 
sider now how society, unformed, unorganized, moved 
upon by the spirit of self-protection and mutual good- 
will, would be likely to treat such a culprit I There 
were no prisons ; the merciful gallows had not been 
dreamed of. It would seem that all about him simply 
joined hands, and, through the suggestions it may be 
of the Divine spirit, drove him out, a wanderer, a 
vagabond, upon the face of the earth ; and Cain cries 
out, '' My punishment is greater than I can bear ! " 
(Gen. iv. 13.) Does God give him an}" intimation that 
this is only the prelude to immortal woes bej^^ond the 
veil? Contrariwise, not only utterly silent is he in 
regard to that transcendent fact, — if fact it be, — 
but he puts a mark upon Cain, lest anybody meeting 
him may destroy him from the face of the earth. 



74 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

Now, these are two most important crises in the 
very establishment of the Divine government of 
the race ; and they are without fxwy pretence of the 
slightest hint of the doctrine of interminable woe, 
or any woe, be3'ond the grave, for the sins of this 
or of an}' other life. Eemember, it was the very 
infanc}' of the race ; there was an absence of all 
experience ; there was no background of histor}', — 
no lessons garnered from Divine Providence through 
a long period of observation. Eemember, the}' were 
human souls, with all the interests of human souls at 
stake, treading an untried path, dealing with the 
profoundest facts and principles, with little to guide 
them ; the ver}- language in which they were ad- 
dressed being, probably, but imperfectly understood. 

Is it a marvel that the world grew wicked ; that 
the solicitations of appetite and passion, in the ab- 
sence of an}' habitual restraints, should have more 
and more demoralized the children of men? Is it a 
marvel that, after fifteen centuries had elapsed, the 
world was found almost utterly corrupt, — so cor- 
rupt that God (speaking after the manner of men) 
said, "It repenteth me that I have made man" ? 
(Gen. vi. 6,7.) Warning Xoah of the approaching 
catastrophe, and warning the multitudes on every 
hand, he caused the ark to be prepared ; and Xoah 
and his family entered into it. Then the windows 
of heaven were opened ; the torrents of rain de- 
scended ; and the world of mankind were swept from 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 75 

the face of the earth ! Not the faintest inthxiation, 
however, that water was to be followed by fire ! Not 
the faintest intimation that they were swept from 
this scene of wickedness and corruption into a w^orld 
of everlasting sin and suffering ! Silent as the grave 
concerning any woes that should come after ! The}^ 
were warned ever and anon to turn from their 
wickedness ; were exhorted to repent and submit 
to God : and j^et, though deaf to entreat}^, the veil 
is not lifted ; thej^ are shown no woe from beyond 
the grave ! As the curtain hung, so it remains ; and 
the wicked w^orld is swept awa}^ 

In great merc}^, undoubtedl}^, to the whole family 
of man was this sweeping judgment executed. It 
emphasized, as nothing else could, God's displeasure 
at sin, and left a lesson that could not be lost on the 
ages that should follow. 

Five or six hundred years more roll on. The 
world did not again become so corrupt. It does not 
appear that there has ever been an age when the 
world has been as corrupt as it was in Noah's time. 
Yet certain cities, which have been copied by other 
cities in later ages, fell through luxur}^ into debauch- 
eries, self-indulgence, and licentiousness, and became 
as obnoxious to the righteous government of God 
as was the antediluvian world. God again poured 
out his judgments : this time in consuming fire. 
Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain, 
were now blotted from the face of the earth. Never 



76 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

an intimation, however, that these fires were to be 
continued ! Xot a hint that this destruction was not 
the entiret}^ of the divine judgment upon them. The 
Apostle Jude speaks of them, in this very judgment, 
as '' set forth for an example, suffering the ven- 
geance of eternal fire" (Jude, verse 7). It is unde- 
niable that reference is had solely to the fire that 
destro^^ed them from the earth, because it is "set 
forth for an example." But whatever interpretation 
ma}^ be given to this language of Jude, it cannot 
affect the point before us, — namel}', the original 
judgment does not go one step bej'ond death. The 
matter is left there ; the cities are devastated ; and 
all beyond remains veiled as before. How can we, 
for a single moment, suppose that during all this 
time there were in store judgments of eternal ven- 
geance in the unseen world, to which these sinners 
b}' wholesale were sent : and yet no hint of it to all 
these inexperienced multitudes? 

In the mean time, Abraham had been called. He 
had moved up to Canaan and there settled. Chil- 
dren were born to him ; and the promise of universal 
blessing originall}" made to him was repeated to his 
son Isaac, and to his grandson Jacob ; and after two 
hundred and fifteen 3^ears Jacob and his family — in 
all seventy souls — went down into Egj'pt. Preceded 
b}^ Joseph, who through the sin of his brethren had 
been sold to Egj^^tian merchants, and had risen to 
high place in Pharaoh's court, they heard of the 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 77 

plenty he liad stored, and fled thither to escape the 
terrible consequences of a famine prevailing in Ca- 
naan. In honor for a time, the}^ became subjected 
at length to thraldom, — to as dire a condition of 
slavery as the world has ever known : which they 
endured for a considerable portion of two hundred 
and fifteen j^ears more. At the end of that period 
had matured the purpose for their deliverance. 

I need not rehearse to 3'ou the wondrous methods 
by which God, the Father of us all, made Moses his 
willing servant, and afterward persuaded Pharaoh 
and his hosts to let the Israelites go. It is sufficient 
for us to notice that at no time during those wonder- 
ful providences did God say to Pharaoh, '' Let these 
my children go, or I shall despatch you to the realms 
of unending punishment ! " Not a hint of all that ! 
There are various plagues, — dust become lice ; frogs 
through all the house, even in bed and in kneading- 
trough ; swarms of flies ; boils and blains ; the plague 
of hail, of locusts, and of darkness ; murrain among 
the cattle ; and the destruction of the first-born 
among the Egyptian families (Ex. viii. , ix. , x. , xi.) , — 
but not a hint is there of an}' thing beyond the grave. 
When Pharaoh consented to let them go, and repent- 
ing pursued them with his hosts w^ho were swallowed 
up in the sea, not by a single breath did God indi- 
cate that they were swallowed up to woes eternal ! 
An utter silence on all beyond what was visible to 
them is maintained. 



78 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

A little later Moses comes to Sinai. He stands 
face to face with Jehovah. "And the Lord said 
unto Moses, Go unto the people and sanctify them 
to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes, 
and be readj^ against the third daj^ : for the third day 
the Lord will come down in the sight of all the peo- 
ple upon Mount Sinai. . . . And it came to pass on 
the third day, in the morning, that there were thun- 
ders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the 
Mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud ; 
so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. 
And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp 
to meet with God ; and the}^ stood at the nether part 
of the Mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on 
a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in 
fire ; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke 
of a farnace, and the whole Mount quaked greatl3\ 
And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, 
and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and 
God answered him by a voice. And the Lord 
came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of 
the Mount ; and the Lord called Moses up to 
the top of the Mount ; and Moses went up " (Ex. 
xix. 10-20). 

Such were the startling and almost tragic circum- 
stances under which transpired the most important 
event in all the ante-Christian times, — name]}', the 
giving of the Moral Law, or the Ten Commandments. 
This law has ever since been the foundation of the 



1 

1 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 79 

ethics of the world. It was not abrogated, but on 
the contrary confirmed, by Christ himself. It may 
surprise us to observe that at this most solemn mo- 
ment in the histor}' of the race no sanction whatever, 
drawn from the invisible world, was invoked. Not 
only was there, in this immediate connection, no 
appeal to future and invisible woes as a penalty for 
the breaking of this law, but there was absolutely 
no penalty' save what was involved in the nature of 
man himself. It would seem that, for the sweep of 
the ages, God relied upon a loftiness of motive to 
which the interpretation of Christian ethics has rarely 
' attained : such as the Commandments themselves 
present, — recognizing the fact that obedience to a 
moral principle, proceeding from any other motive 
than the principle itself, is disobedience. 

It was otherwise, however, with the specific pro- 
hibitions connected with this law as they were blended 
w^ith the ceremonial code. The rites and commands 
therein enjoined, though often involving no moral 
principle, were enforced by various sanctions, — some- 
times even death itself. While these penalties uni- 
formly referred to outward and visible transgressions, 
they would undoubtedly promote ceremonial obe- 
dience, — naturally nurturing a habit of obedience 
which is but a step removed from obedience to prin- 
ciple. Thus is the law a schoolmaster bringing us 
to Christ. But severe as these penalties often were 
(speaking after the manner of men) , they were len- 



80 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

iency itself compared with the supposed revelations 
of the gospel time. 

If jou follow individual fortunes, \om find the 
same result. Moses spake unadvisedly with his lips, 
and was not suffered to enter the promised land. 
David, a great sinner in his treatment of Uriah, was 
nevertheless, — though prevented from building the 
temple, the material for which he had gathered, — 
permitted at length to "sleep with his fathers." 
Boastful Goliath was laid low by the shepherd bo3^'s 
sling. Eebellious Absalom came to an untimety end. 
Sin is everj^where avenged ; but death is the utmost 
judgment at any time inflicted. 

The government of God over his chosen people 
while the}' remained a united nation, and subsequently 
while they were maintaining two rival States, was a 
government of temporal rewards and punishments. 
When they obej^ed the commands of God, they were 
successful in their conflicts with the heathen nations 
about them ; when they were disobedient to the divine 
behests, thej^ were defeated ; and when at various 
times, in their deep forge tfulness of God, they wan- 
dered far from him, the}' were given over to captivity 
to those same heathen powers. But never in all 
these vicissitudes were there other than temporal 
judgments thus announced and executed upon them. 
The}' seem never to have dreamed that inspiration 
was pregnant with any future woes. 

Thus, whichever way we look, friends, we find a 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 81 

uniformit}^ of the Divine government in this respect 
which seems to show that on temporal rewards and 
punishments did God exclusively rely throughout the 
whole period preceding the revelation of Christian it}^ 
In the light of facts like these, — and 3'ou will observe 
we have not thus far been dealing at all with theories, 
— we cannot but.be cautious in our interpretation 
of whatever phraseology of the old Scriptures drops 
into seeming harmony with the severities of modern 
thought. And we must not forget that we do not 
read these Scriptures in the language in which they 
were written, but in a translation made, I grant }'ou, 
by honest men, but by men who had come to believe 
in ghosts and devils and demoniacal spirits, and in 
endless woe itself as the crowning act of the Divine 
government. That these convictions or prejudices 
should have influenced their interpretation of Scrip- 
ture, cannot be thought at all wonderful, nor be for 
a moment doubted. 

Whenever we read in the Old Testament of "hell" 
in a great variety of connections, we are not to ac- 
cept the word, as a matter of course, as meaning 
what it has been long employed to mean among 
Christians ; but, on the other hand, we are carefully 
to scrutinize its use in all its varied connections, and 
conclude what is its radical and specific and general 
meaning. The original from which this word is 
translated, I need not say, occurs in the Old Tes- 
tament sixt3-four times. In just half of those in- 

6 



82 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

stances it is translated by the word ' ' hell ; " in the 
other half it is translated twenty-nine times by the 
w^ord ''grave," and three times b}" the word "pit." 
Aside from the fact that it is used metaphorically in 
various instances, there is not the slightest reason, 
in an}^ one of the sixty-four cases, why the same 
English word should not have been used in the 
translation. 

It would appear that the translators, unconsciously 
perhaps, acted upon this rule : Whenever the entire 
passage did not cut them off from such translation, — 
as, for instance, when it would send a patriarch like 
Jacob to hell, or prove the destruction of that favorite 
place, — the}^ used the word '' hell," in the rendering 
of the Hebrew '' sheol," instead of the word ''grave," 
or the phrase, " the unseen state of the dead." So 
we read, as specimens of these Scriptures (Deut. 
xxii. 32), "For a fire is kindled in mine anger, 
and shall burn unto the lowest hell" (sheol). In 
Psalm ix. 17, it is said: "The wicked shall be 
turned into hell [sheol], with all the nations that 
forget God." 

We are accustomed to the cavil on this passage 
that it cannot here mean the grave, for turning the 
wicked into the grave is only to send them where the 
righteous go : and yet we have a way of sending 
murderers prematurely to the grave, and deem it a 
punishment. It is not a question whether wicked 
men or righteous men are mortal, but whether pre- 



1 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT 83 

mature destruction is a penalty. In harmony with 
this thought is the original promise : ' ' Honor thy 
father and thy mother, that thy days ma}' be long 
upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee " 
(Ex. XX. 12). Again, in Psalm v. 5, speaking of 
the impure woman, it is said : '' Her steps take hold 
on hell " (sheol) . In Proverbs xxvii. 20, we are told : 
'' Hell [sheol] and destruction are never full." 

In aU these and like cases where the word is ren- 
dered "hell," learned commentators of all schools 
tell us that it means the " underworld," or " state of 
the dead," without any discrimination as to their 
goodness or badness. 

By turning now to the Scriptures in which that 
same word is rendered "grave," you will find that 
it would often be quite impracticable to render it 
"hell." Thus, in Genesis xxxviii. 35, Jacob says: 
* ' I will go down into the grave [sheol] unto my son 
mourning." It would not have been deemed re- 
spectful to send the old patriarch to "hell unto his 
son mourning." In 1 Samuel ii. 6, we read: 
" The Lord . - . bringeth down to the grave [sheol] , 
and bringeth up." It would not have been compati- 
ble with the prejudices of the translators to bring 
men up out of hell ; they were only anxious, appa- 
rently, to get them safely into hell. In Psalm xxx. 
3, it is said : " O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul 
from the grave [sheol] ; thou hast kept me alive, 
that I should not go down to the pit " (sheol) . You 



84 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

see clearly why the word ' ' hell " is not here used in 
the translation. 

Where it is rendered "pit," we have these forms 
of expression: Numbers xxi. 30, ''And they shall 
go down quick into the pit " (sheol) . Again, Num- 
bers xvi. 33, " And all that pertained to them went 
down alive into the pit" (sheol). Scriptures like 
these, I repeat, must be interpreted in the light of 
the general history of God's deahngs with his people, 
and can by no means be construed as bearing the 
significance of the word ' ' hell " in its current use 
among Christians. 

When David says, '' The pains of hell [sheol] gat 
hold upon me ;" '' Thou hast delivered my soul from 
the lowest hell " (sheol) , — he but symbohcall}^ de- 
scribes the severe woes to which he felt himself 
reduced. 

In view of these principles and facts, various au- 
thorities have given their most decided and unqual- 
ified opinion that the Old Testament is utterly silent 
with regard to the state of the dead. Dr. Edward 
Beecher, still a behever in endless punishment, — 
which he conceives to be taught in the New Testa- 
ment, though through a peculiar interpretation of his 
own, — says: — 

' ' The onl}^ form of retribution prominently pre- 
sented in the Old Testament as existing for four 
thousand years, was temporal, and did not refer to 
the spirit- world and a future state." 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 85 

Again he says : ' ' But certainly temporal retribu- 
tions must have been, in the judgment of God, an 
element of great power, and well worthy of attentive 
consideration, or he would not have mainly derived 
the motives of his revealed government from them 
for four thousand years." 

Yet again he says : "In the law of Moses, taken 
as a law, a rule of life, individual and national, 
there is not one motive derived from a future state 
and its retributions. All is derived from this world 
and the present life. The same also is true of the 
patriarchal dispensation, and of the world before 
the Flood." ^ 

The Mosaic ^.nd patriarchal dispensations, and the 
world before the Flood, cover the entire period to 
the end of the Old Testament canon. 

Jahn, in his " Biblical Archaeology," — a depart- 
ment of learning in which he is without a peer, — 
testifies to the same effect : " We have not authority, 
therefore, decidedly to say that any other motives 
were held out to the ancient Hebrews to pursue the 
good and to avoid the evil, than those which w^ere 
derived from the rewards and punishments of this 
life." 

To these we add the testimony of Dr. George Camp- 
bell, Principal of a college in Aberdeen, in his sixth 
" Preliminary Dissertation," already quoted in a for- 
mer lecture: "It is plain that, in the Old Testa- 

1 Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution, p. 4. 



86 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

ment, the most profound silence is observed in regard 
to the state of the deceased, their joys or sorrows, 
happiness or misery." 

These testimonials are valuable as coming from 
scholars who believe that the New Testament teaches 
the doctrine of endless punishment. Several canons 
and members of the clergy of the English Church, 
— among them Charles Kingslej, and lately Dr. 
Farrar, with a host of others, — might be added, 
who deny that the doctrine is contained in either 
Testament. 

To the same effect is the testimony of the Jewish 
Rabbis. Dr. Wise, of Cincinnati, sa3's : "That the 
ancient Hebrews had no knowledge of hell is evident 
from the fact that their language has no term for it. 
When they in after times began to believe in a sim- 
ilar place, they were obliged to borrow the word 
Gehinnom^ ' the valley of Hinnom,' a place outside 
of Jerusalem, which was the receptacle of the refuse 
of the city, — a locality which by its offensive smell 
and sickening miasma was shunned, until vulgar su- 
perstition surrounded it with hobgoblins. Haunted 
places of that kind are not rare in the vicinity of 
populous cities. In the Mishnah of the latest origin, 
the word Gehinnom is used as a locality of punish- 
ment for evil-doers, and hence had been so used at 
no time before the third century a.d." ^ 

Dr. Lilienthal, — another learned Rabbi of Cincin- 

1 Universalist Quarterly, April, 187S, p. 239. 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT 87 

nati, — in a sermon on "Judaism and Hell," makes 
a distinction between the Talmudical and Biblical 
hell and endless punishment, emphatically^ repudi- 
ating the last as a doctrine of the Jewish Church.^ 

Here then, m}' friends, we stand ; and let us sur- 
vey, for a moment, the position. Four thousand 
years have gone by. The law has been given, and 
commands have been issued, with penalties annexed 
for their violation ; and not in a single instance is 
there an indication of any sort whatever that any 
other punishment awaited the transgressor than that 
which is explicitly announced, which is uniformly 
temporal. 

This being true, is it possible that the doctrine of 
endless punishment can have been revealed in the 
New Testament? Do not leave me to answer the 
probabilities of that question. With utter silence 
in the beginnings of government, the giving of the 
law, the administration of affairs, and the execution 
of God's judgments for four thousand years, is it 
conceivable that during all this time the doctrine 
of endless punishment was true, but that it was 
reserved to be made known in connection with the 
gospel ? 

If it be so, consider what follows : Firsts that the 
dispensation of grace is the very womb of the doc- 
trine of endless punishment, — a most graceless (I 
say it reverently) accompaniment of grace ! Secondly^ 

1 Universalist Quarterly, April, 1878, p. 239. 



88 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

heathen ignorance on this hj^othesis transcends 
divine inspiration ; for, during a large part of this 
period, the heathen world, and many of the Jews 
(probabh' through heathen influence) , believed in this 
punishment, though divine inspiration gave no hint 
of it ! Thirdly., if the doctrine sprang up among the 
Jews, independent of inspiration, then the sponta- 
neity of Jewish thought antedates Christian revela- 
tion ! Xo one of these positions would we for a 
moment accept. If the doctrine was true, and was 
kept in store for the wicked dead through all those 
four thousand years, what possible reason could be 
assigned for the delaj^ in its announcement? 

Is it presumptively salutar}-- ? Is it in its influence 
moral? If adapted to any age, would it not be to 
the more barbarous ages ? Was not the world cor- 
rupt enough, morallj' necessitous enough, to demand 
its earl}^ promulgation ? If God relied for four thou- 
sand 3'ears on the administration of temporal rewards 
and judgments, often including death itself, does he 
not tbereb}' say these are salutar}', these are most 
eflficacious ; these, on the whole and finall^^, will best 
promote the moralitj^, virtue, and righteousness of 
the world? 

Is the doctrine of endless punishment salutarj', 
judged in the hght of fact? It is very difficult, 
friends, for us to approach this question and look 
at the facts as the}' are. The very first duty we 
owe is that of love to God. The first great com- 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 89 

mandment is, "Thou -shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart ; " and the second is like unto 
it : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On 
these two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets." Now, it is pertinent to consider that 
whatever leads us thus truh^ and sincerely to love 
God with all our souls promotes morality, virtue, 
righteousness, and general obedience to the divine 
commandments ; and whatever bars such love to 
God tends to disobedience of the divine command- 
ments. 

The question, then, narrows itself: Does a belief 
in endless punishment tend to promote love for the 
character and government of the Father, Law-giver, 
and Judge? Is the doctrine that God will finally 
bring us to an account, in which he will adjudge a 
very considerable portion of the race to everlasting 
woe, — meantime leaving the whole world in uncer- 
tainty to what extent individuals or their friends may 
be involved in this result, — fitted to awaken love 
to God? Does that conviction tend to draw out the 
affections unto the Father, and lead men in loving 
admiration and reverent adoration to worship the 
Most High God? If it does that, it is moral in its 
influence ; if it does that, it is salutarj^ upon the 
heart ; if it does that, it promotes righteousness ; 
if it does that, it moves men to general obedience 
to God. If it bars that, it is a hindrance to these 
great attainments for w^hich God made us, and to 



90' 



EXDLESS PUXISHMEXT. 



secure Trhieh he is administering the government 
of the world. If it begets abjeetness rather than 
love ; if it nurtures fear and dread, substituting 
ceremony for love, then is it not salutary. Its 
body of service lacks the soul of devotion. Mul- 
titudes of people in all ages have been moral, not 
because of their faith, but notwithstanding that 
faith. 

Judging from the conditions of society in various 
ages, as bearing upon this subject, what have we 
to say ? One thing is clearly manifest : the ages in 
which that doctrine has been most absolutely un- 
questioned have been darkest in crime and most 
abounding in misrule ; they have been ages in 
which bloody deeds have most prevailed, and in 
which the race of mankind have been most agi- 
tated on every side. Coarseness of manners, de- 
fences of the •• divine right of rulers," sovereignty 
of kings over the lives of their queens, cabinets, 
courtiers, and subjects, have flourished in the chill- 
ing breath of such a doctrine. Among all the 
American colleges to-day, that in which Orthodoxy 
is the rankest has proved itself the most disor- 
derly. 

When slavery spread a dark cloud over our entire 
South, the doctrine of the real brotherhood of the 
race could not gain a foothold south of Mason and 
Dixon's line. Calvinism could go there ; Armenian- 
ism could go there ; the Baptists, with doctrines cor- 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 91 

responding to both, could go there ; Presb3'teriamsm 
could dwell there ; every thing that taught a final 
separation and endless punishment could flourish 
abundantly in that soil. But the doctrine that God 
has trul}^ ' ' made of one blood all nations of men 
for to dwell upon all the face of the earth," could 
gain no foothold there. Those of you who have 
read Mrs. Stowe's exhibition of the qualit}^ of reli- 
gion and morals that prevailed through the century 
in which this institution was ripening to its over- 
throw, do not need to be told that the religions of 
the South were not greatly promotive of virtue, piety, 
and righteousness. 

On the other hand, those periods when light has 
most prevailed ; those lands where human culture 
has been most advanced ; those regions where the 
powers of reason and judgment have been most 
strengthened, — have been the periods and countries 
where a more liberal view of God has prevailed. 
Then and there gentleness has reigned ; then and 
there neighborly kindnesses have been most abound- 
ing ; meekness and humility have most graced human 
character, and Phariseeism has been least obtrusive. 
If we can conclude any thing, therefore, from the 
relative conditions of the world in the various ages 
under the different views that have prevailed, as 
respects their influence upon morality, virtue, and 
righteousness, it is that the doctrine of endless pun- 
ishment is not salutary. 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 



Now, I should be doing great iiijiistice were I to 
sa}^ that the masses of men who have beheved in the 
doctrine of endless punishment have not thought it 
an important instrumentality for good. Undoubt- 
edly, that has been their conviction. Undoubtedly, 
the doctrine has been greatly effective in begetting 
certain kinds of piety ; but tlie quality of that 
piety, on its best side, may be confidentl}^ inferred 
from the uniform answer to the question, Do 3'ou 
really love God? "I hope I do," has for gen- 
erations been the response, — as though it were a 
matter about which there could be any reasonable 
doubt. 

But God has answered this question of the moral 
influence of the doctrine. He has in fact put away 
all doubt about it. He has utterl}^ rejected it for 
four thousand years, — years in which it might be 
supposed to be salutarj^, if it could ever be so. Is 
it at all probable, friends, — I repeat the question, 
— that, after such protracted rejection and practi- 
cal condemnation, it came into the world in the 
arms of the dispensation of grace? I would seri- 
ously commend these considerations as bearing 
also upon the probable error of even limited future 
punishment. 

There is another subject that ought not to be lost 
sight of, in weighing the influence of this barbarous 
doctrine. It has been a fruitful source of scepticism 
in all the more enlightened periods of the Christian 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 93 

Church. Bj scepticism, I do not mean the simple 
rejection of the so-called evangelical doctrines. The 
most reverent faith rejects them ; and, because it is 
reverent, rejects them the more decidedly. I speak 
of that scepticism which denies revelation altogether, 
and which undertakes to say there is no God ; or, if 
there be a God, that he has not communicated with 
the children of men. Parker and Ren an are often 
quoted as confirming the position that the Scriptures 
teach the doctrine of endless punishment, — a posi- 
tion admitted by them, while rejecting Christianity 
itself. The consideration should be added, that 
those distinguished men rejected the Scriptures, at 
least in part, because they believed them to teach 
that doctrine. Is it strange that they should so 
believe ? They were reared in that faith ; they had 
been bound by that faith ; the Scripture language 
they had heard coupled with the doctrine from time 
immemorial had constrained their faith ; and before 
the style of criticism which in our day has shown 
its falsity had come to be appreciated, they had 
rejected it, following in the pathway of Hobbes, 
Hume, Bolingbroke, and others. 

All about us to-day are multitudes who either 
entirely disbelieve, or have but a cold and unin- 
fluential faith in, the Scriptures, because of the 
supposition that they teach such doctrines. Let 
them once be seen to be delivered of such con- 
ceptions, and the common thought of God would 



94 E.VDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

rise into a measure of faith ttMcIi would make rev- 
erence for God and obedience to his law a daily 
delight. 

Turn a moment, friends, and look upon the Scrip- 
tures of the New Testament in the light which Christ 
throws upon them. When our Saviour would teach 
the world the purpose and efficiency of his Mission, 
he calls attention to a few instructive parables : 
"What woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she 
lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep 
the house, and seek diligently till she find it?" 
(Luke XV. 8.) "What man of you, having a hun- 
dred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave 
the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after 
that which is lost, until he finds it ; and when he 
hath found it, he laj'eth it on his shoulders, rejoic- 
ing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together 
his friends and neighbors, saying unto them. Re- 
joice with me ; for I have found my sheep which 
was lost" (Luke xv. 4-7). He shows us the prod- 
igal son, also, wandering from his father's house, 
squandering his patrimony, scarred all over from 
head to foot with his transgressions ; and j'et, 
quickened b}^ the memory of that father's house 
and the abundance it contains, he arises and re- 
solves to return, to make confession, and ask to be 
again received, though it be but as a hired sei-vant 
(Luke XV. 11-32). Everywhere the Saviour teaches 
us the recovery of those " dead in trespasses and in 



1 



OLD TESTAMENT SILENT. 95 

sins," and the bringing of them into the Hfe of the 
gospel. 

When the apostles would employ the highest mo- 
tive to obedience, they speak as in the text: ''I 
beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of 
God, that 3^e present j'our bodies a living sacrifice, 
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable 
service." ''I beseech you by the mercies of God," — 
this is the agency which constrains men to offer their 
bodies a living sacrifice. This acceptable service is 
also pronounced a reasonable one, as every heart 
feels it to be. 

Behold, then, the world "dead in trespasses and 
in sins ! " See it called unto newness of life ! Deaf 
apparently to the entreaty, it need not therefore be 
despaired of. The promise through Christ is in the 
"fulness of times." He shall at length "see of 
the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." In 
the fulness of his compassion, "he shall come down 
like rain upon the mown grass, — as showers that 
water the earth." " He shall judge the poor of the 
people, he shall save the children of the needy, and 
shall break in pieces the oppressor." The prophec}^ 
shall be fulfilled that " in his days shall the righteous 
flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon 
endure th." 

The persuasives of the apostle shall, in the cj^cle 
of human discipline, become efficient. The "mer- 
cies of God" shall prevail. "All kings shall fall 



96 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

down before him ; all nations shall serve him .... 
His name shall endure for ever ; ... all nations 
shall call him .blessed. . . . And blessed be his 
glorious name for ever ; and let the whole earth be 
filled with his giorv. Amen and Amen ! " (Psalm 
Ixxii.) 



FUTURE LIFE. 97 



V. 



WHAT UNIVERSALISM HAS TO SAY 
OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 

" So, WHEN THIS CORRUPTIBLE SHALL HAVE PUT ON INCOR- 
RUPTION, AND THIS MORTAL SHALL HAVE PUT ON IMMOR- 
TALITY, THEN SHALL BE BROUGHT TO PASS THE SAILING 
THAT IS WRITTEN, DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP IN VICTORY. 
DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING ? GRAVE, WHERE IS 
THY VICTORY ? ThE STING OP DEATH IS SIN ; AND THE 
STRENGTH OF SIN IS THE LAW. BuT THANKS BE TO 
GOD, WHO GIVETH US THE VICTORY THROUGH OUR LORD 

JESUS CHRIST." — 1 Corinthians^ xv. 54-57. 

T PROPOSE to speak to you to-night of the Future 
-^ Life, — its reality, its character. Of the im- 
portance of the problem I need not remark. No 
topic of human interest to which we could turn bears 
any comparison with it. Nay, all other interests 
together shrink into insignificance beside it. 

Nor need I say that we are indebted exclusively 
to revelation for the hope of such a life. Instinct 
may yearn for it ; analogy may suggest it ; reason 
may declare it probable, — but no one of these, nor 
all of them together, can affirm it. For an assured 
hope in a life beyond the grave we are indebted to 
revelation, and to revelation alone. 

7 



98 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

Since philosophy is incompetent to make known 
such a life, it is still more incompetent to determine 
its characteristics. If our philosophy cannot inform 
us of the existence of an unknown island, still less 
can it determine the number and height of its moun- 
tains, or the course and breadth of its rivers. So, if 
philosophy cannot assure us that we shall live again, 
it cannot assure us of the duration of that life ; nor 
of the moral qualities that will pertain to it ; nor yet 
of the objects of attention that will constitute its 
chief interest. 

A different view, I am aware, somewhat widety 
prevails. The fact of a future life being established, 
philosophy, it is supposed, may step in and deter- 
mine its details. It should be observed, however, 
that whatever is necessarily involved in the fact of a 
future life, and is deducible therefrom, is held more 
properly on the basis of revelation than of philoso- 
phy. For example : when the Scriptures promise us 
life beyond the grave, they virtually assure us that 
we shall remain the same persons ; that we shall know 
that we have lived before ; that, in a word, we shall 
retain our identity. 

What is thus involved on the side of Scripture 
promise is included subjectivelj^ in the hope that 
promise begets. Of no avail would it be to hope for 
a future existence so isolated from our present being 
as to furnish no links of connection. As well might 
we cease to be, and some other person live in our 



FUTURE LIFE. 99 

stead. Consciousness that we have lived before is 
the very substance of such a hope. Not only, there- 
fore, must we be the same person there that we have 
been here, but we must know that we are the same. 
Our memory of ourselves must be so comprehensive 
as to make us conscious of our identity. 

In the same way alone can we find consolation on 
the loss of friends. In the resurrection thej^ must 
retain their identity, and must recognize us, and be 
recognized by us. Thus mutually knowing ourselves 
and each other, the promise and the hope of immortal 
life are adequately fulfilled. 

Now, say our philosophers, if we retain our iden- 
tity in the next world, we must carry with us all that 
goes to make up our present being, — our affections, 
moods, emotions, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, 
purposes and aims ; and, in a word, our present 
characters. 

This proposition contains a manifest confusion of 
ideas. Identity primarily pertains alone to our 
personalit}^ ; secondarily, to our nature as beings of 
perception, reason, judgment, and conscience, requi- 
site to give an assured home to our personality. 
Nothing that is changeable about us can be included 
in this category. Our moods, therefore, our objects 
of afifection, our hopes and fears, our joys and sor- 
rows, and the like, — all of which are changeable, — 
must be excluded. These may or may not remain 
the same. Our character as rational and responsible 



100 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

beings, distinguishing us from all other creatures, is 
unchangeable ; but our moral character, which makes 
us censurable or meritorious, may change from 3'ear 
to year : often does change even from day to day. 
Identit}", on the other hand, continues the same, not 
only from the cradle to the grave, but doubtless 
throughout the entire duration of our being. 

Revelation, therefore, in assuring us of a future 
life, virtually assures us that we shall retain our 
identity in that future life ; but it by no means as- 
sures us that we shall, on that account, or for that 
reason, be the subject of no change of mood, affec- 
tion, emotion, hope or fear, joy or sorrow, purpose 
or aim, or any thing that goes to make up moral 
character. These, in our past experience, have been 
the subjects of continual change ; while our identity 
in its very nature defies all change. It appears, then, 
that nothing can be predicated upon the continuance 
of our identity in respect to the continuance of our 
merit or demerit, nor of the rewards and punishments 
consequent thereon. 

Nor is the argument for future punishment, based 
upon conscience, more successful. Conscience, it is 
claimed, is the voice of God within us. It discerns 
the qualities of right and wrong, infallibly approving 
the right and condemning the wTong. While its 
condemnation of the wrong-doer must be regarded 
as among the Divine means of retribution, its proph- 
ecy of punishment to come, it is assumed, is proof 



1 



FUTURE LIFE, 101 

that further judgment is in store. And when that 
prophecy, as is often the case, is announced in the 
very hour of death, it is conclusive of punishment 
beyond the grave. 

Let it be observed that we are not now discussing 
the truth or falsity of the doctrine of future punish- 
ment, but simply testing the conclusiveness or incon- 
clusiveness of certain philosophical arguments for 
that doctrine. The problem as involved in con- 
science needs to be very carefully stated. 

Conscience may be said to be made up of two ele- 
ments, — the one variable, and the other invariable. 
The one embraces the intelligence and judgment to 
which we have attained respecting anj^ moral prob- 
lem ; the other includes the sense of obligation to do 
the right and abstain from the wrong which we have 
come to recognize, and that sense of self-approval or 
self-condemnation which we experience when we do, 
or fail to do, what we think our duty. 

In the discharge of this latter function, conscience 
may be said to act uniformly ; commanding us to do 
what we think is right, and rewarding us accordingly. 
In the rendering of this service, conscience cannot 
be suborned. It invariably condemns us when w^e 
think we have done wrong ; it as invariably approves 
us when we think we have done right. 

But what we think about any moral problem, and 
how we judge its right and wrong, depend upon our 
intelligence, education, culture, and all moulding in- 



102 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

fluences. Many treat this topic as though conscience 
were possessed of a private intelligence of its own ; 
while, as a matter of fact, it acts and must act under 
the same general intelligence that controls all other 
faculties of our being. We are delighted with what- 
ever we think is beautiful, however our taste may be 
at fault. We are charmed with what seems to us 
good music, however our ear may be untrained. We 
eagerly pursue what we think of transcendent in- 
terest, however unworth}^ it may really be of our 
rational regard. 

It will be seen, then, that what our philosophers 
dignify with the name of prophecy of conscience, is 
simply what our education, intelligence, and judg- 
ment lead us to expect ; which expectations spring 
not from the invariable but from the variable element 
of conscience. All branches of the Christian Church, 
both North and South, for a long period thought it 
a duty to uphold slavery, and were approved by their 
respective consciences. Now that the institution has 
been abohshed, it is not difficult to perceive that the 
former conscience was somehow at fault. At this 
very da}^, the great body of the clergy of all sects 
think dram-drinking a moral wrong, and would be 
self- condemned if they indulged in it ; while not a 
few in our cities profess to think it right, and in- 
dulge in the practice with self-approval. Mean- 
time, conscience remains true to its function, 
— rewarding us when we do what we think is 



FUTURE LIFE, 103 

right ; punishing us when we do what we think is 
wrong. 

You leave jour horse at the door. A thief leaps 
into the carriage and drives away at the top of his 
speed. Knowing the organization of society about 
him, as respects criminal law, he continually looks be- 
hind him in apprehension of a constable's approach. 
As he nears a railway station, where a telegram may 
have preceded him, his apprehensions are equally 
divided between front and rear, — not knowing in 
which direction his dangers are greatest. Would it 
not be a little absurd to speak of this man's con- 
science prophesying telegrams and constables? 

Given a man educated and still a full believer in 
the doctrine that this life is simply one of probation, 
and the next exclusively one of retribution, and he 
will expect future punishment. That expectation 
springs, not from his moral sense, but from his gen- 
eral conviction. Place over against such a man the 
veteran atheist whom I once met, and who, a few days 
before his death, at ninety-five 3^ears of age, declared 
that he " believed in no God but Nature, and no life 
beyond the grave." That man's conscience did not 
prophesy future punishment : contrariwise, only an- 
nihilation and rest. 

Most of the practical problems of life are simple, 
and therefore easily resolved. About these the con- 
sciences of men of the same age and countr}^ rarely 
differ. But not a few of the very simplest have been 



104 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

so presented to a perverted understanding in the 
darker ages of the world as to override both parental 
and filial affection, and suppress all the holier light 
of Nature. Conscience just as strongly commends 
obedience to the dictates of such perverted judgment 
as it does to the behests of the most enlightened 
understanding. The very general looking bej'ond 
oneself for retribution shows to what extent^ men 
have failed to recognize conscience as God's retribu- 
tive agent within us. 

Again, it is alleged that memory insures future 
pain as a consequence of our present sinfulness. We 
never can recall a past transgression, we are told, 
without a pang of remorse in view of it ; just as the 
recollection of a good deed, and especially a virtuous 
act performed at great sacrifice, brings satisfaction 
and dehght. Now as memory will survive in the 
next world, — being an essential element in the pres- 
ervation of our identity, — and as the memory of 
our manifold sins will undoubtedly be among the 
things it will recall, it follows that the pangs of re- 
morse will be proportionately experienced. 

Let it be noticed that this is stating the proposition 
absolutely. It alleges that the memory of a sin 
necessarily brings remorse. If this be so, several 
important conclusions will follow. 

First, if one sin remembered gives remorse, everj^ 
sin remembered will give additional remorse ; and a 
degree of remorsefulness past description may follow. 



FUTURE LIFE, 105 

Secondty, if a remembrance of past sins as we 
enter upon the next life necessarily brings remorse, 
then the like remembrance of them at any distant 
period in eternity will continue to bring a like re- 
morse ; and if memory shall continue for ever, the 
remorse resulting from its action must continue for 
ever. Every sin is a fact in history which cannot be 
removed. Memory itself is immortal. Whenever 
it recurs to past transgression, it necessarily brings 
remorse. It follows that remorse is immortal in the 
soul that has sinned. This reasoning would not only 
establish the fact of future, but equally that of end- 
less, punishment. 

Thirdl}^, since all have sinned and come short of 
the glory of God, and since memory will be to all a 
like reminder of their moral unworthiness, it follows 
that all souls will experience not only future but 
endless reAiorse in view of the sins of this life.. We 
are thus led, by the premises furnished, step by step, 
not only to the supposed salutary doctrine of future 
punishment for the incorrigible, but to the very com- 
forting doctrine of endless punishment for the whole 
family of man, both the penitent and the impenitent. 

We all feel, of course, by this time, that there is 
some mistake either in the premises or in the reason- 
ing. The conclusions, surely, cannot be accepted. 

The error is a palpable one. It is not true that 
when memory recalls a past wrong, it necessarily 
brings remorse. Such a proposition overlooks the 



106 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

great fact of Christian forgiveness. The promise is 
as true now as of old, that he who ' ' seeks shall find ; " 
" to him that knocketh it shall be opened." To such 
the prophetic grace still applies : ' ' Though your sins 
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though 
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool " (Isa. 
i. 18) . Of the soul thus forgiven the Apostolic dec- 
laration holds good : ' ' There is therefore now no 
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who 
walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit " (Rom. 
viii. 1). To the penitent the promise ever is: '^I 
will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their 
sins and their iniquities will I remember no more " 
(Heb. viii. 12). 

The revelator puts the question now before us be- 
yond cavil. He represents all rational beings as 
remembering their sins, as remembering their re- 
demption from them through the ' ' Lamb of God 
that taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29), 
and as rendering him ascriptions of praise in grate- 
ful and blessed acknowledgment of their redemption : 
6 c ^^orthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, 
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and 
glor}", and blessing. And every creature which is in 
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and 
such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, 
heard I saying. Blessing, and honor, and glor}^, and 
power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
unto the Lamb for ever and ever ! " (Rev. v. 12, 13.) 



FUTURE LIFE. 107 

It would appear, then, that the problem of future 
punishment cannot be resolved by the fact that our 
identity will be for ever preserved ; nor on the ground 
that conscience prophesies future punishment ; nor 
yet on the ground that the memory of transgression 
necessarily gives pain. The doctrine is true, if true 
at all, for quite other reasons than these. 

Those who are confident that philosophy deter- 
mines its truth, turn now to the demands of justice. 
Every man must be rewarded according to his works. 
God visits "indignation and wrath, tribulation and 
anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, . . . 
but glory, honor, and peace to every man that work- 
eth good, ... for there is no respect of persons with 
God" (Rom. ii. 8-11). Now, as it often happens 
that the last act of a man is a sinful one, and as jus- 
tice must have its claim, punishment, it is thought, 
necessarily awaits such a man after death. 

No subject of study can be more profitable for us 
than the workings of Divine justice. When fully 
analyzed, its aims are manifest, and its methods 
simple. 

First, as a divine principle, justice springs out of 
the relations of God and man. All that we are and 
have we owe to the infinite Father. Our various 
powers constitute us in his image. All the delights 
of holy love are made possible to us by the nature 
he has given us, and the wondrous universe in which 
he has placed us. Every capability of good involves 



108 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

our subjective needs, and those objective blessings 
provided us of God as the supply of these needs. 
'' For of him, and through him, and to him are all 
things ; to whom be glory for ever. Amen." (Rom. 
xi. 36.) 

What can be more just, then, than that God 
should require our supreme affection ? ' ' Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the 
first and great commandment. And the second is 
like unto it : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self. On these two commandments hang all the law 
and the prophets" (Matt. xxii. 37-40). This is 
the great, the primary, the abiding claim of justice ; 
a claim it will never give over ; a claim that cannot 
change ; a claim to secure which all its deahngs with 
man, all the penalties of the law, and all the provi- 
dences of God are directed. 

Secondly, this claim no man has full}^ rendered ; 
and all have, therefore, become amenable to the de- 
mands of the law. To secure the original claim, 
God visits man in chastisements. He makes no 
change in principle nor in purpose. He interposes 
no penalty that would bar the claim for the violation 
of which it is inflicted. Least of all can that justice 
which primarily requires love to God ever rest in 
eternal hate of God, whatever woes such hate may 
bring. The penalt}' therefore is limited, and the end 
is love ; or justice is for ever despoiled. 



FUTURE LIFE, 109 

Thirdl}^, since obedience to the law is a moral 
fact, disobedience is likewise a moral fact ; and as 
every domain has its own sanctions, the moral do- 
main has moral sanctions. Sin, therefore, which is 
a fact of the moral nature, brings upon itself the 
penalt}' or condemnation which that nature can in- 
flict. It is immediate, it is just ; for it will be 
severe, or otherwise, according to the light sinned 
against. It springs up spontaneously with the con- 
sciousness of sin. Hence, '' the wicked are hke the 
troubled sea when it cannot rest ; whose waters cast 
up mire and dirt" (Isa. Ivii. 31). Thus sin is the 
very seed of woe : it brings upon itself its own pen- 
alty. Not measure for measure is given ; rather 
it is a stream of bitter waters flowing from a bitter 
fountain. Dry up the fountain, and the stream will 
cease. 

Fourthly, the same act which violates a known 
moral obligation, and is therefore a sin, may violate 
various physical or social laws ; which violation, 
strictly speaking, is not a sin, but may bring corre- 
sponding physical or social consequences. These, 
be it remembered, are the sanctions of physical or 
social laws, as moral condemnation is the sanction 
of the moral law. 

Now condemnation of conscience, the proper pun- 
ishment of sin, ceases when forgiveness is accepted. 
It is not a question of specific acts, receiving a spe- 
cific amount of punishment. It is rather one of 



110 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

moral condition, out of which flow moral conse- 
quences both retributive and just. Penitence and 
faith change that moral condition, and the conse- 
quences cease to flow. ' ' He that heareth my word 
and belie veth on him that sent me, hath everlasting 
life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is 
passed from death unto life " (John v. 24) . 

Faith is the pivot of this revolution. There is a 
moment when one comes to believe ; a moment when 
he comes into possession of '' everlasting hfe." No 
matter what was the last preceding act. That act 
was the outflowing of the unbelieving heart, in which 
still abode condemnation. "He that believeth not 
shall be damned" (Mark xvi. 16). How long? As 
long as he does not believe. This is the just sanc- 
tion of the moral law. The moment he believes, 
"he hath everlasting life, and shall not come into 
condemnation ; " that is, any more. The sinful con- 
dition is at an end ; and, strictly speaking, the pun- 
ishment is at an end. Justice now has secured its 
primary claims, — a believing, loving, loyal soul. 
It asks no more. 

Nor is the fact changed, whether that moment in 
which faith is reached be the last moment of this life 
or the first moment of the next. Whatever may 
have been the last act of this life, if, in the opening 
of the next, faith and love shall come to be cherished, 
everlasting life will be enjoyed ; punishment will 
have ceased, and justice will have gained its end. 



FUTURE LIFE, 111 

Observe now, we are not saying that faith and love 
will be thus gained ; we here submit only that there 
appears no reason why they may not be. This is a 
question of fact, and must be determined before we 
can say that punishment will or will not be continued 
in the life to come. Possibly revelation may throw 
some light upon it. We do not propose to discuss 
it at this stage of our remarks. Enough that it is 
seen that justice alone does not resolve the problem. 

Justice requires faith, love, and obedience. It 
institutes means to secure these ends ; it asks noth- 
ing beyond. These gained, justice does not delay 
the consummation of bliss. It does not wait to pour 
out additional vials of wrath upon the head of one 
who was a sinner, but is such no longer. For aught 
that philosophy or Scripture can say, justice will be 
satisfied that men shall believe and be saved ; and 
the sooner the better, whether it be in this world or 
in the next. 

Fifthly, it will be observed that in these reason- 
ings we attribute no saving agency to death. What- 
ever else death may do, it does not save men. 
However it may suit the purposes of the devotees 
of error to misrepresent us on this point, they are 
absolutely without excuse. Death may deliver us 
from temptation. It may profoundly impress us as 
a fact. Viewed both in futuro and in prcesenti^ it 
may quicken our sensibilities to the wondrous truths 
of the gospel, whether manifested here in Christian 



112 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

teaching and in divine providence, or revealed in the 
clearer light of eternit3\ But it cannot take the 
place of those truths, nor discharge their functions. 
We must hear Christ's word, and beheve on God 
who sent him, or somehow gather the spuit of such 
hearing and faith. Then shall we have everlasting 
life. I would emphasize this point, both out of re- 
spect to the fathers, living and dead, and in justice 
to divine truth itself. 

Sixthly, there are other consequences of our sins, 
that may remain after punishment has ceased. Not- 
withstanding salvation comes of faith whensoever 
cherished ; notwithstanding the proper punishment 
of sin then ceases and justice is satisfied, — it must 
not be concluded that all consequences of transgres- 
sion therefore cease. There are results which are 
not retributive. Many of the ph3^sical consequences 
of improper living, whether knowingly or ignorantly 
incurred, remain for a long period, even thi'ough hfe. 
As when ignorantly incurred they are innocently 
endured, so when guiltily incurred, they may, after 
repentance, be in like manner innocently endured, — 
endured, not as penalty, but simply as unretributive 
consequences. This remains true, although down to 
the moment of repentance the intelligent conscience 
justly intei-preted them as retributive. 

Many are the ills of life, — sicknesses, accidents, 
effects of climate, — which are not punishments for 
our sins ; as many are the blessings of life, — sun- 



FUTURE LIFE. 113 

shine and rain, and social institutions, — which are 
not rewards of well-doing. There are likewise nu- 
merous consequences of our sins which are not re- 
moved when the proper penalty of sin has ceased. 
Many of these consequences are not ills ; are not to 
be regretted ; are even to be gratefully welcomed. 
One of the consequences of British oppression of 
her infant American colonies was the birth of a free 
and self-governing nation. Judas' s betrayal of our 
Lord helped make manifest his absolute innocence. 
Among the consequences of the general hatred of 
the ruling Jews toward the Nazarene was the placing 
of his pure character in the strongest possible light, 
and the developing all the more clearly of that moral 
power which will save the world. 

So all the events of human experience flow into 
the stream of time and help to impart new color to 
its waters, — not, indeed, necessarily their own color. 
As, in the wide field of chemical affinities, compounds 
often show the color of the elements to have been 
revolutionized, — so, in the moral chemistry of God, 
events born of hate, selfishness, or sin are often 
compounded in results gracious, philanthropic, and 
wise. In such fashion, under God, we may owe our 
highest good, in no small measure, to long catalogues 
of events which, as respects their human origin, were 
neither wise, commendable, nor good. Under the 
magic touch that blends the colors of the spectrum 
into the white light of the sun, it may be that all 

8 



114 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

the hues of human character, which have gilded or 
stained the pages of history, shall contribute to the 
spotlessness of the angelic host that shall sing around 
the throne of God, "Worthy the Lamb that was 
slain." 

Turning back now to our problem, we inquire. Has 
philosophy any thing else to say in support of the 
doctrine of future punishment ? Yes ; it now takes 
up its final position. It sa3's that there is a certain 
persistence of character which makes sudden change 
impossible ; that there is a growing power in habit 
which tends to permanence in evil, so that persons 
d^'ing in sin cannot but continue in it, at least for a 
time ; and that the principles of the Divine govern- 
ment are ever the same, so that as we find them here 
we shall find them for ever. 

I remark, first, we not unfrequentty confound char- 
acter with reputation. Character is what we are 
within ourselves and before God : reputation is what 
the world takes us to be. Character may be changed 
and reputation remain unchanged, at least for a con- 
siderable period. The real question, then, is not how 
we look on men, nor how permanent is our judgment 
of them, but what are they within themselves ; and 
is it possible for them to turn at once from the wrong 
to the right? 

To deny this is to say that what a man cannot 
help doing is nevertheless sin in him ; that sin is the 
penalty of sin ; and that such sin can be committed 



I 



FUTURE LIFE. 115 

when freedom is no longer possessed, — propositions 
that do not become the hps of philosophers. 

But is it true that a man cannot suddenl}^ turn 
from the wrong to the right ? All histor}' answers in 
the negative. The proximate fact of good or ill 
desert in a man is the will. When, accustomed to 
waj^s of sin, he seriously and finaUy wills henceforth 
to do right, — as many a man undoubtedl}^ has willed, 
— his character is revolutionized. Some time may 
elapse before the change becomes known to his neigh- 
bors ; but it is known at once to himself and to his 
God. The possibility and the practicability of this is 
not an open question. Life is a continual illustration 
of it. Hence the first of these positions breaks down. 

Secondly, nor does the argument from the force 
of habit possess any more validity. Let me by no 
means undervalue the power of habit.. It gives fa- 
cilit}^ in all accustomed work. It makes increasingly 
easy the difficult tasks of life. It smooths the rug- 
ged path of duty. It reconciles one to unavoidable 
ills, and confirms that trustful faith which is the un- 
derlying joy of the soul. But against a demoralized 
will it has no power to bear a man on in dut}- . 

So, with the bad man, habit gives a like facility to 
evil, increasing one's power of mischief, enlarging 
the scope of his vicious aims, and co-ordinating his 
powers in the execution of his wicked plans. But 
when he chooses to abandon his wa^^s of trans- 
gression, habit has no power to force a continuance 



116 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

of them. In a word, habit can give facilit}' to both 
good and ill ; but it has no power to coerce them. 

Take an ilhistration which combines mind and 
muscle in the same functions. A j^oung lady of six- 
teen, — of quick perceptions, good abilities, and ex- 
cellent general attainments, but with no training in 
instrumental music, — sends for a teacher. She has 
learned the language of music, and knows the instru- 
ment to the extent that she can strike any given 
note. And yet, as she seats herself at the instru- 
ment, she passes from one note to another, and from 
one combination to another, with such tediousness, 
such a multitude of false strokes, such awkwardness 
of touch, such violations of time, and such jarring 
discords, — all continued day after day, — that you 
grow inexpressibly impatient under it, and wish the 
piano instruction were all given in the next street. 

Five 3^ears roll away. Our painful toiler after 
harm on}" has become an adept. By long, diligent, 
and painstaking practice, she has mastered the in- 
strument. A glance at the page takes in every note. 
Mind and muscle are now thoroughly co-ordinated. 
She thinks at her ver}" fingers' ends. The most 
diflScult passages are rendered with an ease and 
accuracy marvellous to behold, — while attention is 
seemingly directed quite aside. 

We have here one of the finest illustrations possi- 
ble of an intellectual and a phj^sical habit combined. 
All the power that habit can gain is here possessed ; 



FUTURE LIFE. 117 

and whatever coercion habit in any case ma}^ exert, 
we may look for here. But we shall look for such 
power in vain. Wonderful as are the facility and 
ease of movement, there is no power of constraint. 
The young woman marries and settles in life ; and 
when her first babe is laid in her arms she is ab- 
sorbed in quite another style of music, — staccato, 
fortissimo, tremulo, crescendo ; then diminuendo and 
pianissimo: ending in a long breve rest. Habit re- 
mains in its full force ; but has no power whatever 
to bear away the young mother from the babe of 
her bosom to the instrument in the drawing-room, 
whether she will or no. 

Turn to another intellectual habit, with an under- 
lying moral drift, — namely, the habit of profanity. 
We all know the inveteracy of this habit, — so 
marked that we are accustomed to say of any one 
enslaved by it, " He cannot speak without an oath." 
And yet such a one may call at my house on busi- 
ness, and, from the moment he crosses the threshold 
till he recrosses it, not an oath escapes his lips. I 
come along aside two such men walking on the street. 
As I near them my ears are greeted with their accus- 
tomed blasphemy ; as I exchange the morning saluta- 
tions with them, their speech instantly becomes as 
reverent as my own ; and during a further walk of 
fifteen minutes not a profane word is uttered. What- 
ever facility in vicious speech such men may have 
gained, they are under no constraint thereto wiien 



I 



118 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



they have a motive to avoid it ; that is, when they 
do not choose such pastime. 

Suppose, for a moment, we abandon this clear 
truth of the case, and admit what seems so desirable 
to our friends smitten with the salutariness of future 
punishment, — that there is a power in vicious habit to 
bear one on in wrong, nolens volens^ until that habit 
shall have been weakened. What follows ? Remem- 
ber, this victim of habit is a sinner. It is the repe- 
tition of his sin that has formed this uncontrollable 
habit. He enters the future life, and is necessarily 
borne on by it in his accustomed pathway of sinning ; 
each repetition strengthening the habit whence it 
sprung, increasing therefore the power of that habit, 
and making a further and longer course of sinning 
still more inevitable. Is the habit weakened? Con- 
trariwise, it is strengthened. Add another period of 
like experience, and 3'ou will have the like result ; 
and the longer this victim of habit continues in his 
sin, the stronger the habit becomes, and the darker 
the future that lies before him. 

In the hands of a believer in endless punishment, 
this argument, though groundless as we have shown, 
is consistent ; but, as an argument for future sin 
and limited punishment, it is contradictor}^ and ab- 
surd. Its essential weakness is that it is radically 
false. 

Thirdly, it remains for us to notice the fact of the 
permanence of the Divine laws as bearing on future 



FUTURE LIFE, 119 

punishment. Of course the laws of God do not. 
change. The principles of his government are ever 
the same. Those laws of themselves, however, do 
not perpetuate punishment in this world ; no more 
will they in the world to come. It is man's relation 
to the law, as a transgressor, that insures the con- 
tinuance of condemnation ; and as long as that rela- 
tion endures, whether in this world or in the next, 
the punishment will endure. 

Now the fact to be established is that men will 
continue sinners in the future world, and thus stand 
in such relation to the law of God as involves pun- 
ishment. This has not been proved. On no mere 
philosophical ground can it be proved. Men, all 
along the pathway of life, turn from good to ill ; 
from ill to good ; and from one degree of merit and 
demerit to another. Gather up all that philosophy 
can say, and it appears that men may continue sin- 
ners in the next life, and hence be punished there, — 
or the}' may not. All reasoning of the sort in hand 
comes short of the mark, until certain facts, which 
philosophy can never reach, are determined. For 
these we must look to the Scriptures ; and to the 
Scriptures alone. 

Perhaps I ought not to pass, without a word of re- 
mark, the proposition that a life of sin deadens the 
sensibilities and shrivels the moral nature ; so that 
however one may be redeemed from sin and condem- 
nation, he cannot enter, as he otherwise might have 



120 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

^ entered, into the higher joys of heaven ; nor can he 
share in so large a measure the blessedness of salva- 
tion. Such a man, it is alleged, experiences a kind 
of negative punishment in the loss sustained through 
undeveloped capacit}^ 

Granting the deadened sensibilities and shrivelled 
moral natui^e, of which I am by no means sure, and 
all that remains of that soul is still saved. It feels 
no privation ; experiences no lack ; joins in ascrip- 
tions of praise to the Lamb ; and, by the very terms 
of the problem, is fully blest, — blest to the extent 
of its capacity. 

Now, if an}^ thing remains that can be called retri- 
bution, be it so ; I know of none to object. But, 
let it be observed, such speak without Scripture war- 
rant ; speak in a wa}" that would involve others, 
whom wx deem assured^ blest, in a like retribution. 
If the possession of capacities relativel}^ less than 
others involves a negative retribution, what shall we 
sa}' of those d3ing in infancy as compared with even 
the Neros and the Judases of the world ? What shall 
we say of every generation of men, without reference 
to character, as compared with the preceding, which 
has had a longer time for dcA^elopment? What shall 
we say of the whole race of mankind as compared 
with the angelic hosts, which so immeasurably tran- 
scend them in capacity? 

Thus do the various so-called philosophical con- 
siderations fall short of the mark. The truth is, in 



FUTURE LIFE, 121 

attempting to resolve the high things of eternity, 
philosophy transcends its domain. Its wings are 
altogether inadequate for such a flight. Had it been 
otherwise, the world could have dispensed with reve- 
lation, — which it so sadly needed, and which God 
grant we maj^ never undervalue ! 

We turn now to the Scriptures of inspiration, and 
inquire whether or not their light is as uncertain as 
that of philosophj^ Does revelation clearly settle 
any thing concerning the future hfe? Scanty as the 
materials confessedly^ are for a science of the future, 
are the}^ whoU}^ wanting? We think not. The Scrip- 
tures do establish a few things. They map out the 
country, as it were ; determine the headlands ; and, 
in some sort, limit the uncertainties of the problem. 
Let us observe what some of these things are. 

1. In the first place, the Scriptures establish the 
fact that there is no life after death anterior to the 
resurrection life. An ^'intermediate state," so 
called, in which men live dubiousl}^, or dreamily, 
or sufferingly, before they are " raised," has no war- 
rant in a sound exegesis. The doctrine, which the 
Church has sometimes taught, that in such an inter- 
mediate state the wicked are either prepared for the 
resurrection, or inured to the woes that shall come 
to them in greater severity after their final sentence, 
receives at the present very little favor. 

The Scriptin-e principally relied on in support of 
the doctrine is the following : ' ' For Christ also hath 



122 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that 
he might bring us to God, being put to death in the 
flesh, but quickened by the Spirit : by which also he 
went and preached unto the spirits in prison ; which 
sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suf- 
fering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the 
ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls 
were saved by water" (1 Pet. iii. 18-20). Our 
present purpose does not require a careful examina- 
tion into the real meaning of this passage. On the 
face of it there are several difficulties in the wa}' of 
appl3dng it to the support of the doctrine of an " in- 
termediate state." These have led some of the most 
considerate and learned of the commentators to reject 
altogether such an application. Dr. Adam Clarke, 
Archbishop Leighton, the learned Grotius, Calmet, 
and Dr. Hammond are of this number.^ It is plain 
that such a doctrine should be accepted onl}^ on the 
clearest testimony ; while a single passage, by no 
means free from obscurity in its terms, and confess- 
edly capable of other expositions, would proffer but 
a slender support. 

A much more serious consideration, however, is 
presented by St. Paul, who explicitly declares that 
" if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised ; and 
if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain : ye are 
yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen 
asleep in Christ are perished" (1 Cor. xv. 16-18). 

1 Paige's "Selections from Eminent Commentators," pp. 270-274. 



FUTURE LIFE. 123 

It is plain that the phrase ' ' in Christ " here has no 
limiting power. If understood of believers onty, it 
cannot be supposed that believers had perished, while 
unbelievers had not. If it be supposed to indicate 
the hope for all the dead, — their lives being ''hid 
with Christ in God," — it removes all ambiguity. 
Elsewhere throughout this connection the language 
is of the most general character, — ' ' the dead " 
being the phrase continually employed. 

Now, were there an intermediate state of conscious 
existence after death prior to the resurrection, the 
resurrection would not be essential to the continued 
life of the departed. It would not follow, therefore, 
that, '' if the dead rise not," those who have "fallen 
asleep in Christ are perished." The first, then, that 
we know of men after death is in the resurrection. 

2. In the second place, the Scriptures show this 
resurrection to be immediate. Paul says, "For me 
to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phil. i. 21). 
Were death a sleep and the resurrection delaj^ed, to 
die could not be gain. "To live is Christ;" that 
is, the life of Paul is a good: "to die is gain;" 
that is, death introduces him to a. greater good, — 
which could hardly be true, if a protracted sleep were 
to follow. 

Again : " For I am in a strait betwixt two, having 
a desire to depart, and to be with Christ ; which is 
far better : nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more 
needful for you " (Phil. i. 23) . The necessary in- 



124 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, 

ference is that should Paul depart, he would imme- 
diately ' ' be with Christ ; " thus confirming the 
imphcations of the former passage. 

Then again he says, "For we know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
have a building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. v. 1). The 
implication, if not affirmation, plainly is that, when 
the one house dissolves, we enter at once into the 
other. Hence we conclude the resurrection is im- 
mediate. 

3. The third fact estabhshed in the Scriptures is, 
the resurrection is universal. We do not adduce 
here John v. 28, 29 ; because the resurrection there 
referred to is clearly an awakening from death in 
sin : as in the 25th verse, which the whole context 
shows, and which puts it in harmon}' with Paul's 
teaching, elsewhere given, and with that of the Mas- 
ter himself. Paul had "hope toward God, . . . 
that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both 
of the just and unjust" (Acts xxiv. 15). When 
also he discusses the subject at large, in his first 
letter to the Corinthians, he speaks continuall}^ of 
"the dead," — a phrase most general in its character ; 
a phrase that can hardl}^ be construed as meaning 
less than all the dead. But Paul puts the universality 
of the resurrection beyond controversy when he says, 
" For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all 
be made alive" (1 Cor. xv. 22). It by no means 



I 



FUTURE LIFE. 125 

weakens the testimony as bearing on this point, 
though Paul may have had a more emphatic refer- 
ence to moral condition tlian to the mere fact of the 
future life ; because the former would necessaril}" im- 
ply the latter. 

The Saviour, too, in his repty to the Sadducees, 
speaks very significantly : ' ' But as touching the 
resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which 
was spoken unto 3^ou by God, saying, I am the God 
of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the 
living" (Matt. xxii. 31, 32). Here the unqualified 
use of the phrases, "the dead," and ''the living," 
compel us to suppose that all the dead and all the 
living are included. Such testimony is abundant, 
and leads us to the conclusion that the resurrection 
will be universal. 

Having thus seen that existence in the resurrection 
is the onl}^ existence after death taught us in the 
Scriptures ; that the resurrection takes place imme- 
diately upon death, — fairly construing the word 
immediately, and not pressing it to mean instantl}^ ; 
and that the resurrection will be universal, embracing 
mankind of all nations, ages, climes, degrees, and 
conditions, — it remains only that we inquire. What 
is the character of that resurrection state ? 

4. We have already seen that philosophy can here 
give us no practical information. Light must come, 
if it can be had at all, from the Holy Scriptures. 



126 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

The}^, and they alone, can teach us whether the 
resurrection is final, or whether it is but one of a 
series of events of like character and import. And 
if, as we think, it be an ultimate or final state of ex- 
istence, the Scriptures alone can tell us whether it is 
a mortal or an immortal state ; a sinful or a sinless 
condition. So all-important and engrossing are 
these elements of the problem, that we cannot well 
suppose that the}' are left in doubt. 

The source of information to which we first and 
instinctivel}' turn, is the Lord himself. As his min- 
istry wore on, and it came to be understood that he 
taught a resurrection of the dead, — so far agreeing 
with the Pharisees, and of course offending the 
Sadducees, their great rivals for popular influence, — 
he could not fail to arouse against himself the most 
pointed Sadducean opposition. 

Accordingly, leaders of that sect came to him with 
a carefully prepared problem: " Sa3ing, Master, 
Moses said, If a man die, ha\dng no children, his 
brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto 
his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren ; 
and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, 
and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother : 
likewise the second also, and the third, unto the sev- 
enth. And last of all the woman died also. There- 
fore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the 
seven? for the}' all had her" (Matt. xxii. 24-28). 

Let it be observed that nothing is alleged touching 



1 



FUTURE LIFE, 127 

the character of the parties in question. All that 
3'ou are permitted to know about them, all that enters 
into the problem, is that seven brothers successively 
married the same woman. The difficulty the}^ pre- 
sent is not at all one of character, but simply one 
of embarrassment growing out of these domestic 
relations. 

In replying to the question thus submitted to him, 
the Saviour does not intimate that the elements of 
the problem are in any wise deficient ; that before he 
can declare their condition in the resurrection he 
must know their character. He takes the problem 
as they gave it him, and proceeds at once to deal 
with it. 

His first remark shows the direction of his thought. 
" Ye do err," — not because 3^e misconceive the pre- 
vious character of the parties involved ; not a word 
of all this, — but " 3^e do err, not knowing the 
Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matt. xxii. 29). 
Christ proceeds at once to remove their difficulty by 
an appeal to the power of God. "For when they 
shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are 
given in marriage" (Mark xii. 25) . Had the Saviour 
stopped here, the Sadducees would probably have 
wondered what would become of those domestic 
affections which make the relationship of husband 
and wife so dear. Like many another, the}^ were 
probably ready to say, " If I am not to love ni}^ 
husband or my wife more tenderly than I love any- 



128 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

bocl}^ else, heaven itself would have no charm for me." 
Such " do err, not knowing the power of God." 

Have 3'ou never known an orphan girl — a mere 
waif upon the river of life — adopted into a large 
famil}' of daughters, where she was treated as a sis- 
ter, and where, after years had rolled away, it was 
said of her, "She is equall}^ dear with the rest"? 
" We know no differences between her and our own 
daughters," said the parents. " She is as dear to 
us as w^e are to each other," said the sisters. Not 
for a moment was it suspected that parental or 
sisterly affection had declined in that famil}" ; but 
an affection equalh^ pure, possiblj" more unselfish, 
had grown up for one who had no family claim, 
and the cherishing of which had weakened no family 
bond. So, under the penetrating and all-embracing 
love which moved Christ to die even for his enemies, 
the loorld may be welcomed to a more ardent affection 
than man has ever known, — an affection in which 
none of the sweetness of domestic loves will be lost, 
but which will intensif}^, exalt, and purify them for 
ever. 

But the Saviour did not stop there. Having said, 
" When they rise from the dead, they neither marr}-, 
nor are given in marriage," he adds, "Neither can 
they die an}^ more ; for they are equal unto the an- 
gels, and are the children of G-od, being children of 
the resurrection" (Luke xx. 36). He thus declares 
their immortahty, — their equalitj' with the angels, 



FUTURE LIFE, 129 

— including, we may venture to believe, the breadth 
and purity of angelic loves, and their relation to God 
as his children in some sense in which that relation 
did not before exist, and which was consequent upon 
the resurrection. 

Paul has the same thought. "For the creature 
was made subject to vanity, not willing^, but by 
reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope ; 
because the creature itself also shall be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
liberty of the children of God" (Rom. viii. 20, 21). 
This was a liberty, as he subsequently shows, con- 
sequent upon "the redemption of our body" (Rom. 
viii. 23). "Waiting for the adoption," he calls it; 
evidently suggesting a relation to God as his chil- 
dren, consequent upon that adoption, equivalent to 
the Saviour's phrase, " And are the children of God, 
being children of the resurrection." 

The aspects thus presented are still further 
strengthened by the appeal which our Saviour now 
makes to the Scriptures, quoting Moses and com- 
menting thereon. " Now that the dead are raised, 
even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the 
Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob. For God is not a God of 
the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him" 
(Luke XX. 37, 38). If "all live unto him," their 
"adoption" is complete. They are then, indeed, 
" the children of God, being children of the resur- 

9 



130 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

rection," — the children of God in a sense in which 
they were not his children until they became chil- 
dren of the resurrection ; that is, until they were 
made "equal unto the angels." 

"^^^hat facts, now, touching the future life, has the 
Saviour substantiallj' determined? 1. All hope of 
a future life rests upon the resurrection. 2. "The 
dead" were already raised, as imphed b}' Moses. 
3. The}' shall die no more, and are therefore immor- 
tal. 4. Being children of the resurrection, the}' are 
the children of God in a new sense ; and, as Paul 
puts it, are " delivered from this bondage of corrup- 
tion." 5. The}' are equal unto the angels. 6. They 
all hve to God. Will an}" one venture to say that 
sin or its penalty still remains ? 

Thus far our citations from Paul have been mainly 
from his letters to the Romans and to the Philippi- 
ans. We have seen that Paul represents the resur- 
rection as immediate, universal, and the only state 
of conscious being after death. Does he throw any 
light upon the character of those who are or shall be 
raised ? 

Having illustrated the possibility of celestial bodies 
as distinguished from terrestrial, by reference to the 
great differences and variety of the latter ; and hav- 
ing adduced the differing glories of the heavenly 
bodies, not as suggesting differences in the glory of 
different persons in the resurrection, but rather dif- 
ferences in the glory of the celestial as compared 



FUTURE LIFE, 131 

with the terrestrial, — he proceeds to say : '' So also 
is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corrup- 
tion ; it is raised in incorruption : it is sown in dis- 
honor ; it is raised in glory : it is sown in weakness ; 
it is raised in power : it is sown a natural body ; it 
is raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. xv. 42-44). 

This language has special significance when we 
remember that Paul evidentl}^ does not teach the 
resurrection of the body. '^ For we know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
have a building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. v. 1). Thus 
we rise into incorruption, — into a house ' ' eternal in 
the heavens." 

Presenting then the last Adam as ''a quickening 
spirit," justifying the hope of a '' spiritual body," 
the apostle points us to the first man who " is of the 
earth, earthy ; " and to the second man who " is the 
Lord from heaven," — assuring us that " as we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 
the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor. xv. 49). Lest 
an}^ mistake should arise, he adds: "Now this I 
say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit 
incorruption" (1 Cor. xv. 50). 

Finally, summing up his discussion, he says : " So, 
when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, 
and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then 
shall be brought to pass the saving that is written, 



132 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

Death is swallowed up in victory. death, where is 
thy sting ? O grave, where is thj' victory ? The sting 
of death is sin ; and the strength of sin is the law. 
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. xv. 54-57). 

Paul, then, teaches a future life in and through 
the resurrection alone ; teaches that it is immediate ; 
that it is universal, so that whatever he affirms of 
one, he affirms of all ; that it is a resurrection in 
honor, in power, in glory, in incorruption, and in 
the image of the Lord from heaven. He teaches 
that death will then be swallowed up in victory ; 
and that the sting of death, which is sin, will then 
be destroyed. 

These are facts touching the future life to which 
philosoph}', simply as such, could never attain, — 
facts which philosophy can neither affirm nor denj^, 
but to which it readily adjusts itself in every par- 
ticular. Whatever may be that moral influence or 
redeeming grace that shall make the resurrection a 
sinless state, there will undoubtedly be involved all 
the essentials of penitence, faith, forgiveness, and 
salvation, as in the conversions transpiring here. 
That they are wrought, not b}^ the agenc}^ of death, 
but by the power of divine truth, more perfectlj' un- 
derstood then than now, Paul himself clearly inti- 
mates. " For we know in part, and we prophesy 
in part. But when that which is perfect is come, 
then that which is in part shall be done away. 



FUTURE LIFE, 133 

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I under- 
stood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I 
became a man, I put away childish things. For now 
we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to 
face. Now I know in part ; but then shall I know 
even as also I am known" (1 Cor. xiii. 9-12). 

This increased light and knowledge, and conse- 
quently increased redeeming power, favored b}^ the 
removal of all the fleshly appetites and the vain 
shows and pride of life, would naturally work the 
ver}' results which Paul describes as characterizing 
the only hfe beyond the grave of which he gives us 
any knowledge. 

The apostle John, also, appears to entertain the 
same hope. " Beloved, now are we the sons of 
God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be : 
but we know that when he shall appear, we shall 
be like him ; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 
iii. 2) . An atheist, denying the being of a God and 
the reality of a future life, is raised from the dead 
by the power of Almighty God, in whose fatherly 
presence he will stand. Will he any longer deny a 
future hfe ? Will he any longer denj^ the existence 
of God ? Can he be unaffected by a view of his ten- 
der compassion and infinite love? Can he fail to 
feel the glow of filial gratitude in return? Since 
the gracious Father, the loving Saviour, the glorj^ 
of the just, and all the blessedness of purity and 
obedience, in contrast with the hideousness of vice 



134 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

and disobedience, shall then clearly appear, can any 
soul be unmoved ? 

When man is won unto loving obedience, sin is 
loathed and repented of ; faith is devoutly cherished ; 
the divine forgiveness is gratefully accepted ; justice, 
having secured its primary claim, is abundantly sat- 
isfied ; and the child of the great God is saved " by 
the power of God;" ''by the grace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ ; " by the very influences which are the 
soul of the gospel ; for which the name of Christ 
for ever stands, making it, in verit}^, salvation by 
Christ. 

This blessedness solicits our faith, love, and obe- 
dience to-day. Let us accept it ; and, at the same 
time, hope for those who are in darkness as waiting 
the light. Casting aside all vain philosophy, let the 
Scriptures of truth speak to our inmost souls. 



i 



THE END. 



Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 -. 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry' Township. PA 16066 
(724)77?-2ni 



I 



